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Two weeks today, I become a home owner again. Very exciting, although to be honest I think I’m more seat-edgey about getting space for deckchairs, and an old wooden-framed greenhouse than I am a two-storey home with central heating that I can actually turn on and off whenever I want, a fire and space for a separate washing machine and drier.

So today I took to the Grow Your Own Veg book in earnest, and am pleasantly surprised to see how much of the early planting season is left. Tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes and sprouts are all still in reach, even if I don’t get planting for another six weeks. Lettuce, clearly some kind of Olympic veg, can be sown, germinate, sprout and be ready for eating in less than two weeks.

I was particularly interested to read that if you plant them in the right conditions and take care of them you can even grow new potatoes in the middle of winter - particularly if you put them in a barrel in the greenhouse, rather than out in the earth.

It’s an excellent book, all in all, as it’s very practical, and full of little hints, like growing geraniums or basil underneath your tomato plants to save them from whitefly. Nobody knows whether it’s because they can’t stand the smell of the basil and geraniums, or because they actually prefer them to the tomatoes themselves, but it apparently keeps your fruits safe without using chemicals.

Grow-bags coming through. Home-grown salads on the horizon.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Garden, Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.