The Good Life

In a move that would horrify my 21 year old self I’ve started enjoying the act of growing things. I can’t quite bring myself to say gardening though, so lets just say growing things. At our last house we just had a yard, but it had raised planters that were awesome for growing things in. For the last few years in this house the garden has been in a bit of, well, lets call it a ‘transitional state’ and we’ve not really had much room for growing things. But we did lots of work last autumn and this spring and we’ve finally made some headway in sorting out the space and I’ve started doing some growing again!

Over the winter I asked my dad to build me a raised planter to sit along the bottom of the garden and in April we finally got it in and full of mud, ready to do some planting! I’ve just realised I don’t actually have any pics of the planter itself but I love it, so here it is just after we’d got back off holiday, full of plants and surrounded by puppies!

I saw an Instagram post last summer about a company Rocket Gardens and their Constant Gardens -they send out plug plants throughout the year, ready for you to plant up, which is perfect for me as I’m not sure I’m cut out (or equipt) for growing plants from seeds! My Nan gave me some money for Christmas, so I put it to good use and ordered the Urban Constant Garden.

With my plan, plants come 4 times a year and just this week I got my 3rd delivery and it reminded me that I’ve not written about it, or shared any photos!

As of this week we’ve got a bit of an overflowing garden – I might have misjudged the size of my planter somewhat (spacial awareness is not my greatest skill). Currently growing we have;

Beetroot
Carrots
Courgettes
4 different types of lettuce and rocket
Leeks
Spinach and Chard
Cabbages
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Cucumbers
Celeriac
Celery
A variety of beans and peas (although the slugs love these so lots have been eaten!)
Peppers
Pumpkins
Cauliflower
Sprouts
Butternut Squash
Swede
A selection of herbs
Rhubarb (from my grandads garden, via my mums)
Raspberries and blackberries that probably need another year to bed in!
Strawberries

It’s taken a while for everything to grow, but we’re finally able to start eating some of the bits growing. I fear we’ll be eating chard and spinach for the rest of the summer because there is so much of it – it’s kind of taking over. Salads have been transformed though because we just need to pop outside and cut some out of a planter – the rocket is so peppery its amazing!

And I’ve just pulled up the first lot of carrots and planted another round of them!

And in the near future we’ve got flowers on the pumpkin plants, tomatoes growing and going green, beans and peas starting to appear all over the place. Oh, and there are a few peppers appearing too!

I just have to keep the slugs at bay – Our garden is permanently over run with slugs all year round, so I’ve turned into the person buying newky brown to put in my home made slug traps (yes, yes, I’m sure I shouldn’t be killing slugs but at least I’m getting them drunk first) They ate so many of my beans and peas I’ve resorted to putting the most recent delivery of peas in hanging planters in the hope it takes the slugs too long to reach them!

But there are also some plants in the ground that are in it for the long haul – leeks, sprouts, cabbages, broccoli and some squashes! I guess I just need to keep them alive long enough for us to be able to enjoy them.

I’ve really enjoyed getting the deliveries and figuring out what plants we’re getting and will be growing, but I think next year I’ll buy more of the veg we’re more into and less of the ones that take up loads of space. The cabbages are huge and the chard is quite over bearing too! Maybe I’d pick the mini garden and just add in the things that we eat a lot of or I might just mix and match from their site because I have really enjoyed getting the plug plants.