Grow your own and eat it

There’s something quite satisfying about eating food you have planted from seed, watered, nurtured and picked just a few feet away from your house. We have a medium sized garden and are lucky that the previous owners left a dilapidated greenhouse for us when they moved out. We gave it some love and now use it to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and chilli peppers.  Though we use our greenhouse, the majority of what we grow starts its life outside in containers and home-made wooden planters where it is exposed to all the elements.

Lollo Rosso

A lot of people think you need a greenhouse to get things to grow or at least if you want to start growing early when there is still a risk of frost, but we have had lots of success planting things outside.

Currently on the menu in our house are carrots, beetroot, spring onions, several varieties of lettuce, pak choi, fresh herbs, radishes, runner beans and courgettes – all of which have been grown from seed. In fact, hats off to the courgette family; they have produced more courgettes than I know what to do with. Lettuce is equally simple, very fast and easy to grow. The variety we have found to be particularly reliable is ‘lollo rosso’ – it grows without even trying. Sow the seeds early, pick regularly and continue to sow new seeds every couple of weeks and you will have salad leaves that will last throughout the summer.

There is a financial incentive too. We eat a lot of salad but by growing lettuce leaves, rocket and spinach we have made savings each week by skipping past the pre-packaged salad aisle at the supermarket.

Runner beans

The key to success is to think about what you want to grow and start early. Do some basic research on when your favourite things grow during the year and most importantly look up when you need to sow the seeds. If you plant them too late into the season, you’ll end up with some pointless miniature carrots and a poor excuse for a beetroot.

Try picking a few different things to start with and see how it goes. If you don’t have much faith that anything will grow from a few seeds or you are desperately impatient, you can buy small seedlings or plants that have already been started for you.

But, don’t be put off – things will grow and the minute it rains you’ll see the fruits of your labour start to poke through the soil.





And, if you don’t have a garden you can still grow plenty of things on window ledges, window boxes and balconies. Fresh herbs, lettuce, chilli peppers and even tomatoes will all grow inside with regular watering and sunlight. We have a large raised bed where we grow strawberries and raspberries but if you have a balcony, there are varieties of raspberry that will grow in a container and several types of strawberry that will grow in hanging baskets; make sure you pick the ones that don’t grow runners otherwise you’ll just end up inside a tangled web of strawberries.

Carrots and spring onions

Once you have had some success at the growing side of things, you can focus on eating and trying out new recipes, all with the delightful knowledge that:

• What you are eating is fresher than fresh
• You know exactly where and how it was grown 
• You have left no carbon footprint (apart from the journey you made to buy the seeds if you didn’t walk)
• No nasty pesticides or chemicals have found their way onto your food

Happy growing, and eating!

Lettuce, pak choi and radishes