It’s great to grow your own
Ruth looks at the pros and cons of homegrown produce
BEING able to grow your own fruit and veg is a great thing on so many levels. It renders ‘food miles’ almost non-existent, you know exactly how your food has been grown and what chemicals, if any, have been used and most importantly, it tastes better than anything bought from a supermarket.
There’s also the perceived idea that growing fruit and veg will save you lots of money – something we are all keen to do in the current financial situation.
It is possible, but only if you are successful at growing something you eat a lot and buy every week.
There is no point trying to grow something that costs 10 times more in the way of compost, fertiliser and pest deterrents than it does to buy.
We don’t have a massive area for growing fruit and veg, nor infinite time to tend the crops, so we grow the things we know we will eat in season and can freeze for use in winter.
Garlic, shallots, beans and brassicas are the main crops, with tomatoes on the patio and in the greenhouse along with a few pots of chillies.
The ‘Tigerella’ toms that came as AG free seeds have already been potted on and the seedlings are doing well on the sitting room windowsill.
Fruit-wise we grow apples and pears (two of the trees were bought as bare root plants from a supermarket for a fiver each!), fig, rhubarb and lots of soft fruits, which are easy to grow in containers if space is tight.
In winter we also use the previous summer’s growbags to cultivate hardy lettuce and herbs undercover.
Most of the produce is grown in three raised beds so we practise simple crop rotation, swapping varieties around each year to help prevent a build-up of pests and diseases in the soil.
Here we garden using the ‘no dig’ method, hoeing off weeds rather than digging them out and layering fresh homemade compost over the beds each autumn and spring.
Never think that growing your own isn’t an option if you don’t have much room. Lots of food can be grown in containers and growbags: potatoes, all sorts of beans and peas, tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes, fruit bushes and strawberries (today’s free seeds on P12 are a prime example).
You can buy dwarf raspberry canes and fruit trees that will thrive in containers and at the other end of the scale, try growing a few herbs, chillies and peppers and healthy microgreens on your kitchen windowsill.