Weekend Cooking: The Veggie Patch

I think it is fair to say that we are more aspirational gardeners than actual gardeners. We like the idea of growing food, and sometimes take steps towards actually trying to grow some vegetables but we aren't very successful. I guess the thing is, it isn't imperative for us. After all, we can just pop down the shops whenever.

Recently I read a book which was set in WWII called The Railway Girls by Maisie Thomas where there was the following passage about growing vegetables:

"We need to put old net curtains over these young cabbages," said Letitia, "or they'll end up full of cabbage white butterfly eggs. The baby carrots have to be protected as well, in case the nights are cold. Does it show that Steven''s dad gave me a gardening lesson?"
"I feel sorry for the butterflies," said Joan.
Letitia grinned. "I feel sorry for Gran, having to sacrifice one of her old net curtains."
Joan sat back on her heels, rolling her shoulders to ease out the knots after an hour's weeding, which was another thing Steven's dad swore by. She and Letitia were perched on top of the mound that was the Anderson shelter in their back garden. Steven, his dad and various neighbours had all helped to prepare the shelter and cover it with earth, which, in common with the roofs of many air-raid shelters, now did duty as a vegetable plot. The flower beds had been turned over to veg as well.

Whilst it was sounds like it was very normal,and necessary, at the time, in some ways it seems quite unusual to a modern reader. I mentioned earlier that we are think about growing things.

A couple of years ago we bought some garden beds. A few months later we filled them with dirt and eventually, last summer, we put some seeds in. My husband was quite good about remembering to water and check on it but in the end we didn't really get much in the way of crops apart from a profusion of spring onions, which we only use rarely. We even bought a compost bin so that we could use that on our vegie beds. We filled the bin very quickly and then did absolutely nothing with it.

Not too long ago, he came inside and said that there were tomatoes growing! So a year later we finally got a handful of small tomatoes. Better late than never. He was very pleased with himself though.

We are currently in the preparation stages for the bathroom renovation we are doing in a couple of weeks following on from the laundry reno we did not too long ago. We were talking about what we were going to do with the old bath and the old toilet bowl. One of us then said maybe we can use the bath as a garden bed and the cistern for a herb garden! There is a part of the back yard which can't be seen from the house so you could have it down the back and only really see it if you went all the way down the back. So it sounds like we are possibly going to give growing things another go, albeit in quirky garden bed! I mean, if you can grow vegetables on top of your bomb shelter surely there are other opportunities that can be explored, right?

Do you grow your own veggies? Do you have any unusual garden beds?

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