I had never grown courgettes before.

For some reason, I thought they would be really tricky. People used to tell me about the manual pollination, training them over frames, staggering the harvest, stopping them from rotting. Quite frankly, it sounded too much like hard work. I decided to stick with easy stuff like runner beans and the occasional potplant tomato.

But this year I planted courgettes.

I didn’t bother with the hand pollination, the trellis work or any of the other palaver people had warned me about. I just stuck seeds in mud, applied water and waited. (My kind of gardening).

I had heard so many “horror stories” about people getting gluts that I planted a mere two seeds back in April, which I transplanted in May and by June I was the proud consumer of a small but perfectly formed, dark green courgette.

The two plants seemed to be going rather slowly, so I planted two more in May (not much happened) and another two in June.

Someone had told me you only get 10-15 courgettes from a single plant, so this all seemed like a good idea at the time.

But courgette-patience would have been a wonderful virtue and my lack of it now means I harvest near-marrow-sized courgettes on a daily basis.

The other week (clearly not having enough to do!), we kept a log of our week’s crop. We harvested – and somehow ate – 5kg of courgettes!

The June plants are only just getting going and, unbelievably, the April plants are still going strong, producing at least 4 courgettes a week.

Luckily we’ve got a few courgette recipes up our sleeves, for example:

• red lentil and courgette soup
• courgette and Roquefort soup
• butter-sautéed courgettes with red onion and balsamic vinegar
• courgette and dill salad
• courgette and chocolate cake

But our courgette output is increasing by the day and I suspect I’m about to hit mutiny at the kitchen table unless I come up with some new ideas pretty soon!

So I was wondering if any of the Green Girls Global readers have been facing a similar problem?
What are your top tips for enjoying courgettes?

Any sneaky tricks for hiding them in dishes so the family won’t know they’ve been “courgetted” again?
How many courgette plants does a family really need?

I’d love to hear your top tips and courgette stories!

My great uncle Bill used to spend hours in his greenhouse. Although he had a beautiful garden he wasn’t necessarily working, he just used to sit in there, enjoying the tranquility. As a child I didn’t understand it.

Nowadays of course I do understand. In the mayhem of everyday life, work and chasing around I can easily understand what a peaceful place the greenhouse can be and that’s why I’m concentrating my efforts there this year.

Since starting to try and grow veggies ‘properly’ in 2007 the main thing I’ve learned is to be realistic. When you have a working life which hardly gives you the time to eat you can’t expect to suddenly find the time to produce a feast from your garden too.

During my first year of the Veg Patch Diaries I was ambitious, with a list of fruit, veg and herbs as long as your arm. The main mistake I made was to try and run before I could walk and it quickly sapped all of the fun and enjoyment out of gardening. Keeping on top of it became a chore and when I had to neglect the poor little plants because of work and other commitments it felt like a big old waste, defeating the point of trying to bring some self-sufficiency to our little semi in Nottingham.

So badly had we neglected our garden that, until today, the mouldy corpses of last year’s tomato and sweet pepper plants were still in the greenhouse. But inspired by this suddenly spring-like weather we set-to today to give our greenhouse a little TLC ready for a select few fruit and veg seedlings. To make the most of the elusive sunshine we get here in the UK we cleared anything that might block light from the greenhouse and cleaned it right up.

So here we are, nice and early in the growing season with the new outlook that growing food doesn’t have to feel like housework. If it’s manageable it will be enjoyable and, who knows, productive too. In a cold country like ours we can make the most of our greenhouse all year round. We don’t have to over do it, the more exclusive our little veggie collection the more attention we can give and less waste we’ll create.

If you’re wondering about the veg patch it hasn’t been forgotten. This year we’re using it to grow potatoes and we already have the Maris Piper seed potatoes to get cracking. The patch doesn’t get enough light for sun-loving plants like sweetcorn but for the good old potato it’ll do just fine.

If you’re a wannabe greenfingers like me check out the Green Girls Global ‘At Home Winter Garden’ and ‘Dig Carrots’ tees in our Etsy shop. Green Girls can grow veggies anywhere!

Although I’m not going to write in any great detail about my veg growing adventures this year I just wanted to do a quick update and let you know (those of you who are interested) that despite not much success last year we haven’t given up on the good life yet.

Well it’s not quite ‘The Good Life‘ (I still love Tom & Barbara’s lifestyle and Margo’s fabulous fashion), in fact I’ve reduced the numbers and types of veggies this year.

2008′s veg patch includes potatoes, sweetcorn, spinach, cucumber, sweet peppers, lettuce, tomatoes (of course), jalapenos, rocket and radish. Radish are so easy to grow that you can give yourself an encouraging pat on the back every time you crunch one of your home-grown in a lovely salad.

The things I learned from last year and have tried to improve on this time are:

• Start sowing seeds earlier (well I did actually fail on this one because wedding arrangements sapped veg growing preparation time in April)
• Be realistic – There’s no point sowing hundreds of seeds if you don’t have the time or space to nurture them to your table. I was not realistic last year
• Be tougher on pests – I just can’t kill the creatures in my garden but I know I can’t ask them nicely not to eat the greens either, so I’ve tried to put them off with marigolds and gravel. The results? So far so good!
• More food – Yes, I know, this is obvious.
• Hope for the right amounts of sunshine and rain – Still working on this one!

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time to spend in my garden and so I’m starting small and building up. You never know next year we may get chickens for our very own eggs and the year after that who knows?! The Good Life here we come!!

For any of you who haven’t seen the old 70s TV show ‘The Good Life‘. Here’s a classic snippet from one of the episodes: