Grow Your Own! We’re Back.

My own sense of self importance will never allow me to assume that you aren’t all just desperate to know why I’ve barely touched this blog for the last two years. Suffice to say life, as with many other things, happened. I don’t leave my cooking comfort zone as much as I did due to a whole bunch of reasons you really don’t care about. My average day-job-day is now longer and waaaaay more mentally demanding that I have been used to for years and getting screwed by the previous day job and my own body have taken their toll on my energy levels. The result, I just didn’t have the juice to write.
I didn’t have the juice to look after my garden either. The herbs have bolted, the veg patch is obscured with forgetmetnots and I threw out a whole lot of smashed seed trays last summer and never replaced them.
But as it usually does, Spring appears to be springing. The days are longer and the birds are singing. I’ve cooked some actual proper meals recently from recipes and stuff and today, finally, I got my arse outside in the fresh air and my hands in the soil.
I hope it is not premature to announce, Rick Sanchez style, We’re Back Baby!

If you are a fellow grower in this southish eastish bit of the UK you’ve probably noticed the springtime action a little earlier than expected. The daffs are well and truly out, tulips not far behind. There are ladybirds and snails out in the garden and those weeds, well. They never really stopped, did they?
Your local climate, the facing and shelter levels of your garden and the number of sacrifices you’ve made to the goddess Persephone this year will all determine exactly how fast everything is waking up outside, but don’t be fooled by a lack of apparent colour- it is well and truly time to get to work out there.
The Mr and I put in some good hours this morning to weeding, digging and kicking off the annual dandelion hunt before any planting could go ahead. But once the boring jobs were done I got to my first round of GYO activity for 2024 and if you want to do the same then there’s a handy three pronged approach to green fingered success in the next few weeks.

1: Sow What You Can, When You Can: The likelihood of hard frosts now is low but not gone, so you if you are sowing directly outside or in an unprotected cold frame stick to hardy items that will cope with a cheeky drop in overnight temperatures. Carrots, beetroot, broad beans, early potatoes and onions (you really can’t kill an onion) are good to sow directly in the ground now from seed. Today I put out some funky pink onion sets and sowed two types of carrot directly into the veg patch. My faithful easy grow chard and some mange tout have gone in very large pots along with a gamblers trough planter of salad leaves which may or may not be hardy enough to germinate this early. Time will tell!
It is probably still too early for delicate herbs, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers, personally I’d leave these for a few more weeks unless you are sowing indoors or under hefty glass.
And don’t forget the golden number one fail safe fool proof growing hack: if you don’t want to eat it, don’t bloody plant it. Unless you’re a village show, eight pound prize winning parsnip type, grow stuff you like- there’s no better motivation to maintain your groundskeeping efforts than dinner.

2: Flower Power: If you are growing on an allotment or in a domestic garden there is massive value in some non edible, flowering plants to come alongside your summer salad players. The simple reason for this is pollinators. If you’re growing anything with a fruit (so tomatoes, squashes, cucumber, apples, pears, you get the idea) then you ain’t getting nothing from those crops without either some pollinating insects or some long and boring hours with a paintbrush. Life is too short to be artificially inseminating your butternuts, people, so grow some flowers and support those bees and butterflies. They will come for the daffs and stay for your courgettes. The world needs bugs, so feed them. And as the bugs come, so then will the birds, and yes they will eat some of the good bugs but they will also control your slug and snail population and maybe even sing you a happy tune. Win.
I’ve got a good amounts of bulbs alive at the moment in the garden plus a flowering currant with an early showing of blossom and there are already some bees coming to visit us. Today I added some random wildflower and bee bombs to the less ordered areas of the garden as well as directly sowing cornflowers, marigolds and antirrhinums in patio pots for some colour and bug feed.
If you are planting leafy veg like cabbages I’d recommend getting yourself a packet of nasturtium seeds to plant out next month as their leaves make a great sacrificial offering to steer pests away from more delicate plants. They also flower beautifully and you can use whatever survives to the summer in salads, butters and even home flavoured gin.

3: Just Breathe.
Science has proven more than once that being outside in survivable conditions tends to be quite good for the soul. Or if you’re of a demonic origin, your general mental health and stress levels. Fresh air, daylight, plants and dirt feed your wellbeing. It’s nice to be around nature, and the more time you are outside the more you will benefit and the more you will notice how nice your garden is and the more you will want to sit out there and enjoy it. The more you want to enjoy it, the more you will want to tend those flowers and spot those butterflies and the healthier your little habitat becomes the more you will see out there and the more you see out there…….. you see where this is going, right?
Even if all of your home growing goes awry, even if every cabbage is stripped, every tomato burst and every spinach leaf befouled by my old nemesis Moby Dick The Phantom Crapper the trying really is rewarding, even if the payout isn’t always that high. It’s fun. It’s good exercise. It will cheer you up.
Get in the bloody garden.

I would love to hear from you in the comments if you are a home grower! What’s going out this week? What’s already in bloom? Are you going to win that prize courgette rosette at the village fair this year???