31st December

So, a year in the dirt draws to a close – still with jobs outstanding and many lessons to be learnt. Firstly though – has it been a success?

Throughout this journal I have noted when I have bought items and what I have harvested and although I may not have noted exact prices or quantities of harvest, I have kept a tally of receipts and what the produce would have roughly cost me in the shops.

In spending there were many items that will last for a few years, (weed suppressing membrane, hanging baskets and brackets, flowering bulbs, propagator pots and trays and  tools), all of which will be offset not just this year but maybe over a few or more. This includes the strawberry plants which cost £10 and were not expected to be heavy croppers in their first year but will last and reproduce into many plants year after year. It also includes perennial plants. These costs have been start-up costs and will not need repeating in the future except where trays or tools get broken. There is of course the cost of one year-only items, mainly seeds and compost. The overall cost for one year has been £175.86.

What about the costs I have saved though? Well, for a start, if it wasn’t for blight I would have harvested ripe and juicy tomatoes to the tune of 178 average tomatoes and 249 cherries, but that was a saving I did not benefit from. However, I did save on the following: salad leaves £17.88, cucumbers £7.59, garlic £5.95, spinach £6, peppers £8, rocket £2, pumpkins £23.92, crown prince squash £6, rhubarb £6 and for courgettes a whopping £97.66. The definite rounded figures there are conservative estimates. Also bear in mind that the figures are for the equivalent stock from supermarket basic ranges, (not organic) and lacking in the taste and freshness of home grown produce and without the chemicals! So the figure I have (which if I bought fresh organic top-of-the-range produce would be much higher) is . . . £181.00. A profit of £5.14. Now add on the price of buying all those sweet peas, plus the joy of seeing all those plants in bloom and the daffodils and tulips and you are looking at a financial success. Then remember that I did not have any success with cauliflowers, broccoli, sprouts, onions, leeks, carrots, much rocket or strawberries and the aforementioned tomatoes and just think that without all those start up costs how much of an annual saving I would have made. Then remember that a lot of the unused seed can be used next year! Brilliant! It is also imperative to note that the costs included all gardening expenditure – for flowers as well as vegetables, so the savings we made on the vegetables have subsidised the more serious assault on the flower garden!

Still, though, I have learnt many lessons for next year for improvements that need to be made. I will start off onions sets, leeks and garlic bulbs early in modules indoors so that they can have a good head start. Saving money and not buying fences to keep out rabbits and netting to protect brassicas are both a false economy as you waste practically everything you sow so I will have to spend out next year for fencing and netting. I will grow sweetcorn and butternut squash as companion plants.

 I really want to set up some raised beds as the soil type really needs a help. I have some purloined top soil, some leaf mould and loads of manure waiting at the stables to add height, but I must find the wood soon.

I will plant pretty much the same crops with the addition of the sweetcorn and butternut squash. I sowed squash seeds this year from home grown squashes but the seeds did not germinate. I will buy commercial seeds for next year. I found out that squashes are promiscuous cross-pollinators, so as I grow pumpkin, butternut squash, crown prince plus the summer squashes of cucumber and courgette it is safer to get the proper, unadulterated seed to use. I will use the same varieties, as I have lots of seeds left over plus, despite the failures, I don’t think it was the fault of choosing the wrong variety, more the pests who wanted first nibbles. I don’t think I will grow so much salad crops. We don’t really eat that much so I may just have a few containers in the garden for them. Their space will be used by sweet peppers which were a good success in the garden and if I just load up the soil with manure, they should do just fine. I don’t know why the rocket was so hard going and as for carrots I will sow later and prepare the soil better. I will not be growing tomatoes!

To keep the weeds down I will buy more weed suppressing membrane and forget holidays as I never did recover from the advance the weeds made when I went away for one week in early May. (Well, maybe).

In the garden I want to transplant some of the ornamental grass seedlings that have been self sown from the rockery into the front garden. They will look good against the gravel and it will be ideal soil for them. The front garden should be better for bulbs this year, plus I will use the special offer from Gardeners’ World to get some very low cost Poppy and Cornflower seed for the edges of the front and I also have a packet of nigella ‘love in a mist’ that I think will go well. I may also have a container of sweet peas and I might put one of the lavender plants in a large pot out the front too. Mind you, I’ll need to extend the garden if all that is going in!

Out back, a lot of what I did last year will be repeated. I will again plant up the hanging baskets with fuchsias and most probably the petunias as well, or maybe some other plant that will trail out. I will still have the herbs, the shrubs including the roses and fuchsias, the spring bulbs, the new lavenders and more of the same of the sunflowers. This year sweet peas were the runaway success, a great triumph especially as it was my first attempt so I will be growing them again, but I will try different colours. I have so far picked out Blue Danube, Cupani (a duo magenta), White Supreme, Scarlett and Supremo mix. For summer bedding I will have a backdrop plant of silvery foliage called cineraria maritama ‘silverdust’, with some lovely looking blue flowers called ageratums and fiery red Salvias. I will also have another go at growing the nicotianas, because those that did survive into maturity really were good. The rockery will stay the same and I look forward to seeing the lavenders develop there. The strawberries are going well, and I think I will use the large wooden box to grow the ones taken from the runners. Apart from that, there will be a few containers for salad leaves. There, not too much to work on!?

I will, of course, endeavour to tidy the garden and keep it tidier, now that we have the playhouse for the toys. I will attempt to keep the shed in order, and I plan to grub up the lilac on the left and plant those 3 silver birches, underplanted with snowdrops and bluebells.

My greatest lesson this year has been to learn the difference between beginner and intermediate. At the start of this year I knew the basics and was confident with them. I had seen success in the growing of a few plants and crops. I thought I was at the beginning of the intermediate level, but the majority of my experience was theoretical. Not in the sense that nobody had proved it, but that it had not been borne out in my experience. Yes, I could give out the information, but that was from books and radio programmes and the like, it had not gone through my personal experience of putting it into practice, of learning through doing. There were occasions, for example in growing courgettes and sweet peas, that I simply did what I knew to do and it worked a treat, but there has been so much more that I have learnt from doing it and it going wrong, even though I did it by the book. For instance, next year I will start off onions earlier, but inside, and I will begin sowing carrots later.

I have enjoyed this first year of serious gardening and I am glad I kept a detailed journal of my experiences. It has certainly been helpful to look back and see what I have done. I’ve found it to be such a beneficial exercise that I intend to repeat it next year as well as I hope to have greater success to be able to record. I would now term myself as a late beginner with no pretence to anything greater. In terms of non-fruit and vegetable plants I have kept my learning and experience narrow – the small amount I can grow in my garden whilst still having space for children to run around. If I had a huge garden with a great variety of plants it might spur me on to learning more, but then it might also be too much to succeed at. I hope this year I will succeed in all my fruit and vegetable growing, that I will get bumper harvests from all 9 sections of the allotment, not just 2, that I will be able to grow nicotianas and have a good year of summer bedding plants – different to the ones I had success with this year, that I will be able to repeat the success of sweet peas with other varieties. If I can do all that and be on top of the game and do it in my stride, then I may feel like a lower rung intermediate – in my limited area of gardening practice. Of course, sometimes you can do everything right, even after years of previous success and you can still fall foul to pests, diseases, and of course, the Great British weather. With those 3 and particularly that last one, no gardener in this lush isle can really boast of a promising year to come. As the Good Book says ‘let not he who puts on his armour boast like he who takes it off’.