A Garden With Benefits

[lzyjo]

It's been a little more than a year since I first got the crazy idea in my head to dig by the lawn in the back yard. (It makes my back hurt just thinking about it.) Truthfully I don't remember why I wanted to start a garden.But I thought it would be cool to share stories about how we were first inspired to start gardening and how many unexpected benefits we discovered.

For me, unexpected benefit number one is I have never been this tan. (Even if it is a farmer shirt and shorts tan. )

Here there have been so many E. Coli and Salmonella recalls on produce that it's good to know where the produce has been. and what's been put on it.

Also, almost forgot, MAJOR stress reliever when I am mad a some corporate bureaucracy. I go to the garden POd and go home exhausted.

[gemlady]

I started by just growing flowers in tubs on the patio, and enjoyed seeing things grow. As I went around in the evening dead heading and watering just felt such a sense of peace and calm. Now got a greenhouse and growing veg as well. Understand now why my dad loved his garden, shame I didn't appreciate while he was here, could have learned so much.

Really enjoy the pleasure of tasting my own fresh veg, that have travelled just a feet to my kitchen and with nothing nasty sprayed on them. Think next year though, probably won't spend as much time in the greenhouse gazing at seed trays waiting for things to grow

[Flummery]

My Dad (and his Dad) always grew fruit and veg. I have lovely memories of digging up a root of new potatoes for supper (in those early teen years when you are always growing and always starving!) and having them with butter. He also grew outdoor toms and dwarf french beans (we called them kidney beans and I hated them!) I look back on some of the stuff I was too fussy to eat and feel ashamed now. It's always been part of my life. We lived in Manchester - no rural idyll - but a large part of the back garden was a veg plot.

[moggssue]

My dad loved his garden, though mostly flowers with a few tatties and toms, and I think I got into it purely because I wanted to spend time with him. Then I got my own little piece of land and because I'd always enjoyed being outside in the fresh air I wanted to make it a beautiful place to be. Now I've discovered the benefits of growing veg as well and they've totally taken over!

Great thread by the way!

[bluemoon]

Both my grandads grew fruit and veg and both were inspirational in their own very different ways. It was a gene which seems to skip a generation though as my parents moved into their current home on marriage, sowed a lawn and stuck some shrubs around the edges. Lawn and shrubs are still there and, apart from a fortnightly mow of the grass and an annual prune of the bushes, they have done no gardening whatsoever since. They did agree to give me a patch of earth by the back door when I was about seven and I probably should have stuck to herbs, as it was I lost my little garden when I sowed an acorn then defiantly protected the resultant oak tree (though, on reflection, I accept that 18 inches from the house was probably not a good idea) So as soon as I got my own first home my first thoughts were of a veg garden rather than the refurbishment that the house itself needed. I've grown my own ever since, though when the kids were little I did give them a larger lawn. Then when they were old enough to leave alone for an hour or two I got my first lottie. I remember the day I got my first greenhouse, one of the best days of my life.

[lzyjo]

Great stories! I totally agree. Some of the best times I had with both of my parents was growing veggies in the backyard when I was about five. I remember growing yellow wax beans. I loved them! I think the whole thing made me like veggies a lot more. Of course I remember failures, even back then. My grandfather also had a vegetable garden and thinking about memories of his garden provides great inspiration to me. Bluemoon, I think your right, the farmer gene skips a generation, because I definitely have it. Gardening is like a club to end all clubs. When I'm digging in the dirt I feel like I am part of something that has existed probably before the idea of land ownership.

[dexterdoglancashire]

You may have heard of a chap on TV over here called Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who has had a few programmes on TV on self sufficiency, growing your own etc - it's all his fault! I love watching his programmes - shame I can't have any chickens or animals! Bernie

[Shortie]

I totally agree lzyjo, it's a great stress buster!

Plus or me:

Good exercise and stamina builder - I can't stand the gym and get itchy doing classes unles I take Zyrtek. A drug free exercise, yeaaah!

Good exercie for Master Shortie (5 years old) and it's amazing what he learn there too

A peacefully escape from the telly and a chance to hear nature cloe up (though unfortunately we've relised recently jut how many police cars are on th ego in our area as it's o quiet you can hear them much easier

Oh and of course the food and flowers

[Headfry]

I have no idea where I got the 'love' from. Dad never grew veg, but did keep the grass cut.I had no Grandfathers to follow. But.......
When I was very young say 5-7 my Nan, who lived next door but one, let a nice man from down the road grow veg and flowers in her garden. I loved the straight rows of flowers and veg - some were taller than me! I have to own up to pinching radish and lettuce and peas, and spring onions......but with that came the marvel of growing vegetables. Bill, the gentleman who grew the veg was a kind 'old boy' Sadly has since died, I believe it was him that started me off! I started growing sweetpeas at 4 and half years old and have been growing things ever since. Even in my teens I would cut the grass and weed the garden, I loved it! Dad would have a bonfire and teach me about the stars and the bats.....fantastic. Even now when I smell BONFIRE I smile inside and out!
Thanks Bill Sutton and thanks Dad! xx

[zazen999]

I remember growing sweetcorn in our garden in Canada [late 60s], other veg as well but it is the sweetcorn I remember. It was so huge and tasted so lovely.

When we came to the UK [aged 6], my Grandad had a square of my Aunt's garden and he grew peas, lettuces, toms and other lovelies. My mum's house at the time had an allotment style garden and we grew runners, toms, and others but it's the runners and toms I remember most. And that watering - we had to water both gardens from the cold bath water due to the hot summers.

I've not had much space or time over the years, sometimes no garden even; but always wanted to. Once grew toms in the spare room of a flat - they came out lovely.

Then, when I met my OH he was into gardening, and 3 years ago at our old house we decided that we would grow veg in containers as an experiment - we were also thinking of buying a house together at the time so it made sense to experiment and see how it goes.

He sowed the seeds, and as soon as they were ready, he planted some in bits of removed crazy paving out the front of the house, and I bought plastic containers and compost and planted out the same at the back of the house.

We never really looked back after that - it was fabulous. Watering every night together was lovely.

Now, I do the veg; we both do the weeding, and he does the borders/flowers - apart from the companion planting which I do. He does get quite proud when he picks a strawb that I've missed - or furtles to find potatoes. I find him all sorts of different plants that he wouldn't buy by rescuing the seed pods from plants in nurseries/garden centres/open garden schemes/random houses that we pass.

We grow in 3 different places.
We have a courtyard which I made some raised beds and filled with our home made compost from our last house.
We have an allotment style garden, which is half veg beds and half borders, near the canal out the back of the row of houses that we live in. Nothing like sitting out there on warm summer evenings with a Pimms, munching on a strawb/blueberry straight from the garden.
We have an allotment in which we are growing the more hardy stuff like potatoes, onions, carrots, brassicas. Plus beans and peas. I have popped some spare toms down there to see if they will grow without much water.


The benefits of it all are
Fresh veg on the doorstep [thus cutting down on supermarkets]
Fresh air
Exercise
Thrill of planning, preparing, sowing and watching things grow day by day until you are ready to harvest.
Wildlife
Seed saving, i am growing alot of non F1s, and intend to save loads of seed like we do with the poppies/cosmos etc. the flowers on my avatar are last year's flowers, all of which had seed saved and are growing again this year.
Seeing the structures that you make withstand the wind!!! All that civil engineering training seems to have worked!
Apart from a couple of TV shows GW - Hugh FW et al, I haven't watched TV 'just because' for 3 months now. Don't miss it in the slightest.