Like many of us this summer, I’ve been experimenting with growing my own veggies. Despite a late start, due to moving house in May, we’re starting to get results.

I’ve learned so much about the sheer tenacity of perennial weeds, the deepest meaning of “a weed seedling picked in time saves nine” and how exciting it can be to watch your very own butternut squash start off as thumbnail-sized green fruits, with ridiculously massive sunshine flowers. And I never realised that sweetcorn “flowers” look like a bright pink accident at the hairdresser’s.

I already love the fact that I can pop into the garden and come back with an armful of giant courgettes, mutant runner beans and occasionally a beautiful beetroot that survived the thistles and chickweed.

But the other day, I realised that the majority of my food is still coming from overseas.

We eat a wholefood diet that contains a lot of nuts, seeds and pulses, alongside our home-grown or locally-sourced veggies. But looking at the packets for the dried food revealed that every single one was imported.

Lentils, chick peas, beans, quinoa, buckwheat, rice, almonds, cashews – you name it, it wasn’t even grown in Europe. Most of it came from the USA, South America or the Far East. That’s a lot of food miles. Time to stop feeling so smug…

Now, I’m not about to start a paddy field in rural Hampshire, but suddenly it didn’t make sense to be going on about food miles and yet only applying it to fruit and veg?

At the same time, I’ve also been doing my homework about beans.

I’ve got an impressively cobbled-together wigwam row of runners, cannellini, waxpod and French beans, as well as some sickly-looking broad beans that seriously objected to the May move.

The penny dropped – many of the pulses we eat, which are shipped thousands of miles to reach us, could potentially be grown here, too. Lots of the packets in my cupboard were grown in Canada, for example, which has a spring / summer climate not a million miles from the UK’s.

I’ve been researching.

I have found veggie gardening books that claim you can grow lentils, though don’t quite tell you how. A Sardinian friend is teaching me how to grow chick peas (though you need a lot of plants and a greenhouse for best results). The right varieties of French beans will give you kidney beans. Certain varieties of runner bean will give you butter beans. This month’s Permaculture magazine has an article by Emma Cooper, talking about growing quinoa. The list goes on.

I was wondering – why are we so reluctant to grow our own pulses?
I’m guessing because it’s not a tradition in the UK? We don’t find the seed packets in the shops, so we don’t try it. The gardening books don’t make it easy for us. But that’s no excuse not to bother.

So I’m going to start experimenting.

I’ve missed the boat for some things this year, but that will give me time to do my homework.
By next summer, I want to be having fun with learning how to grow my own pulses and seeds. I’ll be discovering (hopefully) which varieties give the best pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, adzuki beans and plenty more besides.

Of course, I’ll keep you all posted on Green Girls Global. And, if you’d like to join in, we can keep the discussion going on the Green Girls Global Facebook Fan Page.

In the meantime, has anyone out there already played with this in a UK-style climate? If you could offer advice that might shorten the learning curve for us all, it would be much appreciated!