A Growing Garden; Part 2!

 

10 weeks ago I wrote a post expressing my wish for a “growing garden”; it explored the fact that we pretty much have a small yard attached to our flat with 4 small borders but despite that I had a dream to make something amazing from it.

Due to the size of the garden, as well as my disability, it has always been just a long term plan to make it better. When we first moved in around July, 3 years ago, it was too late to do anything other than clearing the growth, see what we were working with and prepare it for winter. The following years we stripped back weeds, dug out deep routed plants, vines and trees that were creeping in and made sure that we could really do something amazing with the space.

Despite being disabled I have always enjoyed gardening. Yet, the real challenge for me is finding and utilising the space that I have. My long term plan, as mentioned above, has always been to create a "growing garden"; a garden where we grow as much produce as we can in the little space that we have.

At the time of the post we had started planting our seeds, prepped and nurtured the soil and were debating the concept of turning the deepest bed into accessible raised beds. The more I thought about it the more it made sense to do this. It would be another DIY challenge for me but would create the space for us to grow more produce; ideally carrots and parsnips.

I did exactly that. The rest of the garden has been upcycled. We have a BBQ area built upon the remains of an old double bed, borders made from  another old bed so it seemed to make sense to create the raised bed the same way. We were lucky to know someone who was disposing of some excess wood flooring so decided to upcycle that. The plan was to create opposing poles and use the wood as slats sliding into each other.

 

With that done it was now time to allow growth, plant the seedlings when ready and make the most of what space we have.

10 weeks on and the change is incredible!

 

We managed to create a 3 tier frame for our runner beans that would support 30 plants.

From the off we made sure that snails, slugs and any other insect that would like to harvest on them would stay away with regular checks in the evening. Each week we monitored the plant growth and tried to tame the vines up the self-designed and built structure and it worked. Then suddenly they exploded.

They bushed out, started to flower and still carried on growing! So much so that they grew high enough to reach our washing line, hang on and grow along it!

At the moment we are harvesting around 20 large runner beans each week; when I say large they are measuring at 10 to 12 inches each.

This year was also the year to branch out to other plants. We were keen to see if we could grow cucumbers and courgettes.

In some ways we were both lucky and unlucky with our hopes for these plants.

 

We were unlucky because we planted 10 seeds each and only 4 of each took and grew. It seemed a poor selection until we started to grow them.

Using an old clothes horse, deconstructed, we planted our little cucumber and courgette plants and waited with hope.

 

Very much like the runner beans, we monitored their growth and within a blink of an eye they exploded out! Due to the fact that we had never grown them before we were unknowingly aware of how big they grew and how big their leaves were.

 

However, despite their small space to live they are all flourishing magnificently. We saw them starting to flower and waited to see what would happen. Some of the flowers seemed to start to grow out and others didn’t and then we read, and learnt, about the cross pollination of the different flowers it produced. Since learning this Hannah has been keen to make sure that we are taking advantage of each flower shown and manually helping the pollination.

To our surprise it worked, incredibly well and we are now having a lot of cucumbers and courgettes growing. At the moment, and maybe down to our delay in helping them out, we are only harvesting between 1 to 2 produce a week but with the amount now showing I am hopeful that the next few weeks will produce a lot more.

 

 

 

This year we decided to isolate the tomatoes. My previous attempts found that they dominated the area they were planted and subsequently killed off any other plant around them. This has worked wonders for them this year.

 

We managed to plant 10 plants but, like the rest of the garden, they exploded and you wouldn’t really have space for anymore.

 

They may have shot up and out but their produce is a bit behind as we are only just starting to see tomatoes growing.

 

The next adventure was potatoes. Like the cucumbers and courgettes I had never grown these before.

There is a local timbre yard to us that disposes of off cuts and, always being on the look out there, we found multiple symmetric MDF board. I had enough to make three potato boxes; however, due to a miscalculation from me the third was too high, this year, to add to the top to maintain the plant growth.

 

 

 

It is, however, 5ft tall so I think it should be enough. Every time we saw the plant climb up higher we either added more soil or added the next box on.

Although we have no idea what is going on inside at the moment the boxes have swelled out and the plants have started to flower. Now it is just a waiting time to see what we get when they are ready.

 

Hannah, although helping me when my disability stops me being as productive as I would like, has had a little project of her own. She wanted to use our smallest border and turn it into a herb garden. Despite an initial loss of her Thyme plant she has successfully got rosemary, oregano and lavender flourishing and right in the middle is our pig plant pot with a cheeky pepper plant growing.

 

 

Along with this we have also upcycled a couple of kitchen bins into compost bins; something that we both wanted to do and help with the waste we do produce!

Finally, we have the raised beds.

Despite the effort put into making them they haven’t been used. Time slipped away from us.  Maintaining the rest of the garden this year on top of our family starting school at different stages and home ed meant we lost the valuable time to do more. Money also played its part as we couldn’t afford at that time the extra soil that was needed to fill both beds.

 

 

Ignoring the raised beds we have finally got a garden that is growing produce. It may not in the long run be a lot but considering the small space we have got I couldn’t be happier!

 

 

It has been a dream of mine for years and it is finally happening. This years’ experience has taught us a few lessons too; something that we could adapt and possibly do more with next year.

In the meantime, we are going to enjoy the fruits of our hard work for a few more weeks to come!