What am I growing this season.  Part One.

What am I growing this season.  Part One.

With less mouths to feed, thanks to an empty nest, some would say my garden is too big.  I think I would say my garden is too big.  No one needs four zucchini plants, especially when there is just the two of you – no matter how pretty all the different varieties will look together on the plate!   In an ideal world, all that would be needed for a couple of people would be half a zucchini plant.  Unfortunately, they don’t come in halves.

This meant when planning the garden, I had to think a little harder.  Historically I have found what I like to grow, what we like to eat, and how many plants I need to plant to feed everyone.  For years I fell into a comfortable spot of just replacing empty seed packets and every few years doing a complete refresh, so I didn’t have to worry about poor germination from old seeds.   This season the complete overhaul has come at a good time as I hadn’t refreshed my seed collection in a few years and last season I had to sow with a heavy hand to ensure I had enough seedlings pop up to meet my needs. Even then there were gaps and I had to fill them with seedlings from the garden centre, which in itself was a risk as there is always temptation lurking in those places and it is a danger to my wallet.

Instead of just repeating what I’d already done, I considered each variety carefully and decided if it was a keeper or not.  And if it was a keeper, how many plants did I need in the reduced space allowed.   I spent ages umming and erring over the qualities each crop gave to decide if it got to stay, swapped out for something similar that better suited our needs and or crossed off the list entirely.   I agonised over every plant that didn’t make the cut, and most will be missed terribly.  Although I did reassure myself that I’m not physically taking away the extra garden space so maybe next year if I miss something too much I can put it back on the list.

The problem with downsizing in my garden is I don’t grow great swathes of things, but lots of different things and already many of the stars in the garden are single examples of something interesting.  Which makes it extremely difficult to make the cut.  But I think I have managed to come up with a new list that meets my needs for variety, but with a less is more approach and an abundance that will supply our reduced needs without having us overwhelmed with gluts.

So, this season I am growing:

In Sector One

Early Chief Sweetcorn – this amount hasn’t changed, but what it will mean is we will have the luxury of eating more often from frozen over the autumn and winter instead of eking it out to make it last.

Butternut and Buttercup squash – these will be my go-to pumpkins as they are small enough to manage and they are both prolific enough for our needs.  I don’t need as many plants as I normally do so I’m popping a Sugar Baby Watermelon on the end of the bed as their needs are similar.   Sugar Baby’s are perfect for just the two of us – we don’t need a load of melons so big we can’t fit a single one in the fridge all coming ripe at the same time, no matter how fun they are to grow.

I already have a full bed of Pukekohe LongKeeper Onions, because we use them in almost every meal and historically there has been a window of a few months where we run out and have to buy them.  Maybe this time we won’t need to buy them at all.

I’m at my wits end with tomatoes.  I have had nothing but trouble with them since we moved here – with the horrible wind, the Tomato Potato Psyllid, powdery mildew, and goodness knows what other problem takes advantage of my efforts.  So, this year I’ve reduced the number of plants to improve air flow and focused on varieties that are determinant or early to avoid lingering problems at the end of the season, and disease resistance as a featured quality.  The tomatoes that made the list are:  Black Krim, Chef’s Choice Bicolour F1, Chocolate Sprinkles F1 Hybrid, Early Boy Bush Red F1, Grosse Lisse, Roma, Sicilian Sauce F1 and Small Fry Hybrid. This means sacrificing the fun things like colour and flavour, (well mostly) but at this point I just want a harvest basket overflowing with tomatoes.  Is that too much to ask?

To fill the gap by the reduced tomato plants I’ve popped their eggplant cousins  – Baby Brinjal and Blacknite, at the end of the row for familial communal living.  These are my favourites that I won’t give up on.  The kids didn’t like eggplant, so we didn’t often eat them, and now that doesn’t matter at all.  We can have them in every meal if we want to!  Having an empty nest can be so liberating at times.

Finally, the pea bed has become the legume bed and instead of long rows running up the length of these 5m beds I’ve switched it up to have 1m rows of peas across the beds grown in a successional way that is easier to manage.  The varieties are Earlicrop Massey and Greenfeast.  To have a more practical legume experience I’ve also reduced the beans.  I don’t really like green beans all that much but appreciate a taster every once in a while.  So, I have a dwarf mix of green, yellow and purple beans that at the very least look cool in the garden.  I mostly grow dried beans – kidney and Cannellino but we have an over abundance of these from the last couple of seasons so I’ll just put in a few as it would seem wrong not to grow beans. 

I’m also very late to the party with my broad beans.  Normally I start them in autumn but this year I never seemed to find the 5 minutes to push a couple of seeds into the still warm soil.  So better late than never I have started some indoors to see what a spring (ish) sowing will do and plant them at the end of the legume bed.  At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter because I don’t like eating them, but I love the lovely red flowers the Hughey beans brandish across the spring!

Come again soon – as I justify my choices for the rest of the garden.

Sarah the Gardener  : o)