“Don’t grow courgettes, you’ll be sick of them!”
I’m sitting at the table in my dining room looking out to the poor sheep in the field behind our garden who have endured torrential rain and galeforce winds all morning. In front of the sheep, on our side of the fence, I can just about make out five vegetable beds through the overgrown grass. With any luck these sad-looking rectangular soil plots will be transformed into thriving vegetable plots in the coming months. Or at least that’s the plan.
Since February, I’ve been researching, plotting and planning this space in our garden. I’ve become all of the amateur gardener memes: the person who needs to buy more seeds. The person who sows their seeds too early. The person who obsesses over their seeds and watches them each day. The person who convinces their other half to go to the garden centre “just to look around”.
I haven’t grown plants from seed before now. Well, perhaps some herbs and window ledge cress - a rite of passage for every child growing up in a British household - but I’ve always bought young plants from the garden centre or supermarket instead. Everything in my previous homes with a small garden or terrace was potted so I could move the plants around should they need more shade or sunshine. I rarely ventured further than a herb pot, tomatoes, chillies and courgettes. I hadn’t appreciated how complex having a proper vegetable plot could be. What varieties grow together, and what should be avoided? Soil health. Too much nitrogen. Too little nitrogen. Companion plants. Deterrents. Sun versus shade. How deep to sow seeds? Bolting…
I’ve been sowing (indoors) since the end of February with varying levels of success. Yes, February is early but I thought I’d get a head start with things like herbs and companion flowers that I can stagger or continue to grow throughout the year. Every day I get up and examine my pots on a table in front of our mostly-glass front door. I promised my partner that this would only be a temporary location, but now I have a table established in the hallway upstairs too, and some ‘indoor basil’ in our dining room window. Yes, we have fruit flies. Yes, it’s my fault.
We have to thank the previous tenants for doing the hard work of digging out the plots in the garden. The odd petit leek remains in one of the areas we forgot to cover before winter, albeit a bit limp and weathered. We recently added some borders and some compost to enrich the soil. The photo below was taken back in January. I planted broad beans back in November but that’s the only plant currently outdoors. I recently added some support using bamboo and string as we live on top of a hill and it can get pretty blustery. They’re starting to flower and have proven popular with carpenter bees but unfortunately blackflies, too.
The rest of the plots remain covered with some ugly black tarp but it makes a good shelter for voles and an endless activity for our dog who tries to sniff them out from above. There’s still a lot of work to get through before I can think about planting anything else.
In our new home, I wanted to make the most of the garden space, the hotter climate and the extra free time that I have at the moment which won’t last forever. I have a few varieties of tomato plants doing very well, some nasturtium, morning glory and artichokes. Others aren’t doing well which, I think, is down to my over-watering. Lemon balm hasn’t sprouted at all but the lavender I planned at the end of February has only just shown signs of life so perhaps the lemon balm might make an appearance, eventually… It’s all a bit of an experiment so I’m not being too precious about any flops or false starts. The biggest lesson so far has been patience and trying not to interfere or change too many things.
The one piece of advice that has come up time and time again from green-fingered friends is not to go crazy when planting courgettes (zucchini as they’re also known) as you’ll be inundated with them for months on end. The chances are that someone you know will be growing courgettes too and will be glad to palm one or two or six off on you. “Better to use the space for something else and swap what you have”, they suggested.
I found this quote on the abundance of courgettes.
“If you’ve ever grown zucchini, you know they all ripen the same day. You wait all of June and July for zucchini. August rolls around, and one day – bam! You have more zucchini than you know what to do with. You start handing them out to your neighbours and friends at work because there’s no way any single person can handle all that zucchini. Not even if you’re smart and resourceful and have accumulated dozens of good recipes, not even a person who likes zucchini as much as I do.” – Grace Savage.
So I’ve held off sowing any courgette seeds but I’m sure I’ll give in and be writing something similar to Grace Savage by the end of the Summer. If the slugs don’t get to them first…
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