I find growing my own vegetables at home highly rewarding. I like watching the plants grow over the days, weeks & months, knowing that I’ve helped them along.

Personally I always buy seedlings to cut out the step of germinating seeds. They’re still a frugal option as they’re cheap enough, and the crop far outweighs the initial cost. You could grow seedlings in the home on a small scale, but I think I’ll this for a time when I’m lucky enough to have a greenhouse.

I’m far from an expert at gardening. In fact I first tried growing vegetables last year whilst I was living in a house with no garden. We just had a small concrete yard, but undeterred I managed to put together 2 raised beds filled mostly with soil from a nearby field and then topped up with compost. Despite the limited space and my limited knowledge, I managed a to grow 4 healthy broccoli plants , 4 baby sweet corn plants and 2 fruitful cherry tomato plants. I also grew basil, parsley, coriander & chives. I had also planted some lettuce but these were damaged by slugs and never recovered.

I’d say it was quite successful. The cherry tomatoes were delicious, the broccoli heads were impressively sized, and the baby sweet corn were a big hit with my baby. The main problems I had however were with pests. I guess 2 raised beds in the middle of a concrete yard make for an easy target for butterflies, moths & greenfly. Towards the end of the summer I’d given up trying to keep things under control and I let the caterpillars took over.

So, this year I’m living back with my parents to save money and I have a whole garden to play with. However, I’ve been quite reserved and kept the vegetables to a minimum so its easier for me to handle pests. I’m growing a single tomato plant in a pot, 3 sugar snap pea plants, rhubarb and new potatoes. I’ve also got the usual herbs on the go, and for a bit of fun I’m germinating some titan sunflower seeds in the conservatory.

I bought a tomato plant for about 40p, and transplanted that into a large pot with a 3 cane sticks shoved in to provide later support. Tomato plants are very easy to grow, and in my experience the most important things is to ensure daily watering, and provide plenty of support as the plant grows. The branches get very heavy once the tomatoes start growing, and the individual stems can actually snap off under the weight losing you many tomatoes. When the tomatoes really get going, daily watering then become essential. If you leave it a day or 2 without watering them, you’ll find the tomatoes then split as they swell up with water faster than their delicate skins can expand! Other than this it’s just a case of keeping greenfly at bay by squidging them between your fingers or by using a spray. You can also look at using a tomato feed to add nutrients to the soil, although this isn’t essential if you have good soil. Finally, you should read up on ‘pinching out’ the new shoots which grow where the main branches leave the stem. This prevents your plant from bushing out too much, and sends more nutrients to the developing fruit.

The pea plants will be very much a learning curve for me. Again these are in pots, but at the base of a trellis. They are amazing looking plants, with little curly threads at the end of the branches which reach out and grab onto objects remarkably well in attempt to grow upwards. I’m also led to believe that when they flower they look very pretty to.

The potatoes are a bit of an experiment as well. I know potatoes generally grow like wildfire, but it really was a spur of the moment decision to try growing them. I took an empty compost bag to my compost heap and started filling it, and then I noticed a whole new potato at the top of the heap which had started chitting (This is when the roots start growing out of it). So, I half filled the bag with compost and buried the new potato an inch under the surface. This is now sat at the edge of my garden and has been well watered. As the potato shoots appear and grow, I’ve been told I simply earth it up. In other words  just dump a load more compost on top till only the top few inches of the plant are still showing. This should spur on the development of more potatoes and results in a bumper crop. Growing all of this in a bag means that come crop time I simply slide a sharp knife around the bottom of the bag and dump all the soil onto the ground. This will save me digging around  to find them, and fingers crossed there will actually be some potatoes there!

I’ll provide an update as my plants develop, and I’ll let you know what delicious meals they are used in