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: