How it started

The latest fashion nowadays seems to be growing your own food. Men and women of all ages and from all different social backgrounds are comparing their plums and melons, tomatoes, courgettes, potatoes etc. A revolution is quietly taking place, one where people are abandoning supermarkets and their force grown, imported food, in favor of fresh, homegrown food and the great thing about this is that anyone can grow vegetables and fruit, even if they have limited space. Whatever the size of your garden and even if you do not have one, you can grow something that will supplement your diet and who knows, it may even be therapeutic too, as well as saving you some money!

My own personal journey of self discovery, along with my search for alternative sources of food, actually started in a supermarket car park of all places. My brand new car was vandalized by half a dozen rampaging trolleys after they rolled out of a storage area causing considerable damage to the paintwork. I was insured but felt that the supermarket concerned was at fault so pursued my claim through them. To cut a long story short eventually they agreed to pay for the repairs, over £750, but if it was not for my tenacity, they would not have done so despite making profits of over two billion pounds every year! They need us, we do not need them!

So my search began for alternative sources of food. This was not too hard as we had plenty of local shops in the area, although I did then begin to notice where the produce was coming from as those smaller retailers tend to have handwritten labels as opposed to the very small, and easily missed printed labels of the larger retailers. I soon realized that I was buying potatoes from Israel, apples from America, spring onions from Mexico, broccoli, cabbage and corgettes from Spain just to feed little old me in the UK. The food miles were tremendous, see here for a typical delivery to one UK supermarket.

http://www.squidoo.com/environmental_issues

This strengthened my resolve to find another source, one that could supply me with local produce, produce that was healthy for me and my family. My search took me to Doncaster market where I found several stalls that sold produce grown on local farms plus other stalls that sold meat products, cheese, bread and cakes that were all produced locally. Overnight I reduced my food miles by thousands of miles, a result! I also reduced the amount of packaging that I took home, a double whammy! I single handedly had saved the world!

As my young son was becoming more aware that things had changed and began wondering where our food came from I decided that it was time to grow a few things of our own. A small corner of the garden was allocated and together we planted some seeds. Carrots, broccoli, thyme, rosemary, chives, basil were attempted first. The carrots did very well and Jacob enjoyed tending to them as much as he enjoyed harvesting and eating them. The broccoli was a disaster, as was the basil; it seems that slugs and snails love the young plants so ate them before we had a chance! As for the thyme, rosemary and chives, we now have mature plants that are very productive and help us add flavour to all our recipes.
The following year we tried again, this time we used containers and a selection of mini greenhouses to grow tomatoes, cayenne peppers, carrots, lettuce and also some broad beans which we planted against a newly built wall. Planting the beans, which grow to about 4 feet added some colour to the wall in early spring and also attracted bumble bees as they seem to like the bean flowers, ants seem to like them too but do not see them as pests as they attract birds and also keep aphids at bay. We built a few bee houses to encourage the bees to stay as they are good and every garden needs them. The peppers attract hoverflies and these should be welcomed too as otherwise the pepper plants will not pollinate, unless you do it by hand of course but that can be quite laborious.

I will jump forward a few years to where we are now and I have turned over half the garden to producing food. I have a section 18 feet by 10 feet which is planted with potatoes, runner beans, broad beans, peas, beetroot, carrots, leeks, parsnips, courgettes, broccoli, cabbage, onions and I have strawberries and tomatoes in hanging baskets and also seven different types of peppers plus five different types of tomatoes in pots plus carrots, lettuce, potatoes, garlic, cucumber, butternut squash and even some pumpkins which I hope to harvest at Halloween.