Last week I started planting some seeds indoors and digging over all
the vegetable beds from last year.
So far I've planted 16 gardeners delight cherry tomato seeds, two in
each pot, with the aim of getting 7 or 8 strong plants for ourselves.
If there are spares then I usually give them away. I've also planted
several cauliflowers and a tray of 16 onions.
## Plan for 2023
The plan for this year is much the same as last. 1/3 of our growing
area will be potatoes, usually Maris Piper as we find them to be a
pretty good all-rounder for mash and roast. A couple of rows of
carrots, one of parsnips, one of onions and maybe one of beetroot.
The beetroot we steam and then pickle so it keeps for quite a while.
We only just finished the last jar from last year and we gave two or
three away else we'd still be using them.
For salad we usually grow various salad leaves, webs wonderful
lettuce, spring onions and radishes.
I know we are never going to be self sufficient, but we had several
months last year where we didn't need to buy lettuce, tomatoes,
potatoes or carrots from the supermarket. It's worth the effort just
for the satisfaction of not having to buy them for a while and having
provided at least a little of your own food. Carrots also always
taste a lot better than ones you find in a supermarket. Our preferred
variety are Nantes.
## Fruit
We bought an apple tree on a whim from B&M for 6 GBP. It was dry root
and I have no idea if it will grow but I've soaked it in water and
done all that was instructed. I don't expect we will be eating apples
off it for a couple of years even if it does survive.
We have a couple of blueberry bushes which are now a couple of years
old. I hope to have a few blueberries this year. We also have a
raspberry and blackberry bush. Neither of these provided much fruit
last year but we had a few odd ones. Hopefully they will do better
this year. Thankfully not far away there are wild blackberry bushes
that help to provide my yearly stock of blackberries for my favourite
hot desert blackberry and apple crumbles.
We also have quite a few strawberry plants but they don't appear very
productive and normally the slugs get to them before we do...
