Well I didn’t quite manage to keep up with my plans to add to the blog throughout last year so I’m going to try again this year. To be honest I didn’t quite manage to do anything like the amount of growing on our plots either. This year I am determined to keep this as a main priority in my life because the reasons I have for growing my own organic food are very important to me.

So here I am again with another 200 potatoes chitting away in the living room. I’m going to add more gypsum to the second plot in my 3 year long attempt to rectify our serious clay soil problem, and this year I am going to buy in some compost rather than break my back again with the rotted manure. More expensive and not as ‘organic’ but I want to make things as easy as possible this year so that I can manage to stick to my plan at getting all the raised beds in my five year rotation planted up. The harvesting, cooking and preserving of the crops will also be very time consuming so I’m going to try to make it as easy as possible for now and then hopefully in a couple of years I’ll be used to it and can start taking things further with seed saving etc.

So far this year all we have done is a bit of weeding and today I just treated my permanent asparagus bed with glyphosate in a bid to rid it of the couch and bindweed. I know this is not an ‘organic’ thing to do but it is the only way once the asparagus is established other than hand weeding on the surface which will not rid us of the weeds and will be a very hard and tiring continuous job.

This year I plan to post here at least twice a month and get some more work done on the static web site so that others interested in starting their own organic culinary garden can find all the relative information in an easy to navigate web site.

I am also taking over our communal garden this year. I have not really got permisson from the property owner but I am sure he won’t mind seeing as at the moment NOTHING is being grown at all out there. I intend to plant some rhubarb and wild garlic in a long bed that never gets any sunlight and also plant rosemary, lavender, bay, mint and chives in the sunnier beds and let all other nine occupants know that they can feel free to use the produce so long as they respect the garden and pull out any weeds they see when they pop down to harvest anything that they want to use.

Next year I may invest in some pots to put on the brick plinths in this victorian garden and grow some annual herbs too.