Vegetable Beds Finally Finished!

Ta-Dah!

I made those, I did!

They're not exactly straight and they're not exactly level - but if anyone has a problem with that, there's a shovel and a sledgehammer in the shed - be my guest!

Looks a bit different to the original plan... Because once I had dug it, and laid out the border, it became apparent that I wouldn't be able to reach the middle of it. I had allowed a 30cm pathway between the rows of squares, thinking this would be enough to walk across the bed to reach the central squares for weeding - but forgot that weeding involves not only walking, but also kneeling down, which takes up more space (doh!). So I have taken out the central row and made a proper path, and my one large bed is now two smaller ones.

Luckily, my original crop rotation sudoku grid had a row of three squares at the bottom which didn't fit into an internal rotation set, so I took them out, and shifted the other rows accordingly.

Here's the new Sudoku Grid (Killer version - includes over-wintered, early and follow-on crops):

Very glad I realised I needed to do this before I'd filled the bed with soil!

Maths has never been my strong point, and somehow, I managed to mis-calculate how much soil I needed by a vast amount. I don't know what I missed out in my area-to-volume calculation, but it was obviously a bit key...

I reckoned that the 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat-substitute mix needed 60 litres of each ingredient for the whole of the bed as originally planned. As it turned out, this didn't even fill one of the smaller ones... The soil in them now is thus a little less "Mel's mix" than "Contrary Mary's Whatever-was-to-hand mix".

For the record, each bed now contains:
100 litres Sainsbury's Multi-purpose compost
70 Litres J.Arthur Bowers Cocoa Shell
150 litres Homebase Enriched Peat-Free Compost
60 litres Vermiculite

Or, to put it another way, a grand total of 580 litres more stuff than I thought. And the proportions are completely blown. Never mind. We'll see how it goes, eh?

Things to Do on a Rainy Day (I) What Veg and Herbs are Worth Growing?

Somehow I have a copy of the "Which? Guide to Vegetable Growing". I have no idea when or where I bought it, but I'm really glad I did. The best thing is that it de-mystifies all the technical stuff in my other gardening books. It has loads of clear, simple info on general veg growing, as well as fairly detailed advice on specific crops. I spent quite a bit of our miserable summer going through it, working out what I might be able to grow next year.

It would be all too easy to think that by growing our own veg, we could somehow change the habits of a lifetime and become shiny happy Government-and-Jamie-Oliver-approved healthy eaters. It's far more likely that having grown all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff we should be eating, we'd find it all too much effort to prepare and cook on a daily basis, and end up buying our standard supermarket vegetables after all... It's a waste of effort (and criminally, of food) to grow stuff we won't eat. I decided I'd better stick with what's already in our diet when I considered what to grow. So the next question was "What do we actually eat?"

Well...

If we have lamb, it has to have rosemary with it.

I cook loads of curries, which means we need onions, garlic, coriander and chillies. (Even I am not stupid enough to expect to be able to grow cardomom or a cinnamon tree!)

We eat loads of fish, and usually lemons are involved.

We also eat a fair amount of miso soup with noodles and kneidlh (Spouse's Auntie most amused by this - don't know why - have soup, have dumplings, no?). My version of this involves lots of random green stuff, including

- Pak Choi
- Spinach
- Whatever happens to be in the packet of salad we've only eaten half of, usually some combination of Chard, Rocket, Beetroot tops, Lettuce and Lamb's Lettuce.

Mint is always useful.

Chives and Dill are essential ingredients of Spouse's spectacularly yummy scrambled eggs (green eggs without the ham!) - Dill also good with salmon.

Tarragon useful for roast chicken, and goes well with chestnut mushrooms in red wine risotto.

Basil. Mostly for Thai Green Curry.

Potatoes. New ones with fish, or as potato salad (another use for chives).

Parsnips. Spouse loves parsnips.

Tomatoes. Wasn't sure about this at first, as we don't eat so many of them - but a lot of that is because supermarket tomatoes taste of nothing, so it's not worth it. Then I saw a demonstration on one of the weekend cookery shows of how to produce "sun-dried" tomatoes by slow-roasting them. I use shed-loads of the things, so if I can do that, it's worth growing tomatoes. If I grow cherry ones, they might even get eaten in salads as well.

Brussels Sprouts. Freeze well and keep their flavour - which is actually lovely and sweet and nutty if they're not boiled to a pulp a la traditional Christmas dinners.

Broccoli. We used to get through loads of frozen broccoli florets, but they do tend to go a bit mushy, and we don't really eat enough fresh to justify the amount of space the plants take up. Purple Sprouting Broccoli, on the other hand, is delicious but expensive - if I can grow that and get a steady supply, that would be handy.

Cucumbers. Just for a laugh. (I've got the tomatoes and the lettuce - I might as well finish the salad off. Alternatively, "Anyone for Pimm's"?) And only because the Which? Guide says there are hardy climbing varieties - otherwise it would be impossible without the greenhouse for which we have no space.

Peas. Easy and quick to cook when you need green stuff to go with fish and chips. Unless you're using fresh ones, which are a pain. Mange Tout and Sugar Snaps, on the other hand, are really convenient, and also good for stir-fries. Shame about the carbon footprint. Let's see if I can do something about that (sorry, Kenya...).

That's a good load to be going on with, then.