After you've hacked TV, 360, Wii, your mobile phone, broadband, set your HT up, what is left to do aside from a little gardening to get you in the outdoors? For me it's quality time away from her indoors plus my plants don't talk back to me which is an added bonus. When no one is looking I usually test out some Hollywood lyrics on the tomatoes ('Did you order the code red?!')
Glad to see that members are also growing food. My logic in deciding what to plant is usually swayed by the high street prices of some foods. A handful of raspberries costs around £2, with strawberries and asparagus being just as expensive. This year food will only get much more expensive as we have to import most of what we eat.
I recently bought a load of seeds from my local shop for next to nothing. Lol I never even knew I could get a seed catalogue, time for some serious searching and dreaming of growing mango's in my garden.
Gents it is easy to get started. My garden is crappy clay soil so I had to remove the first foot or so, then I mixed in organic peat from the dump yard along with some el cheapo compost from the gardening shop. I planted the seeds as per the instructions and then watered them everyday over summer. I couldn't believe the harvest, it was so good I felt I had to make a sacrifice to the gods. I didn't use any fancy equipment or chemicals/fertilizers etc, just watered them once a day and gave them plenty of love.
It's all very easy to do just as long as the sun shines.
This year.
Corn
Tomatoes
Potatoes (Early and Late)
Parsnips
Lettuce
Sprouts
Onions
Carrots
Parsnips.
The main reasons for doing it, is because they taste better and to show the daughter that vegetables do not come out of Asda.
Finally we have a face behind the man.
Whatever you do, don't grow runner beans. They just grow and grow and grow until you get sick to death of them.
My dad has an allotment and he grows the usual things people have mentioned... he grew some chillies last year wich turned up alright and we ended up pickling them. Garlic, cucumbers, iceberg, strawberrys... I got him to grow some BokChoy last year but didn't turn out well.
You should get a seed catalogue, should give you some ideas and get you to grow the odd unusual thing along side the main staples as little experiments, see what happens.
LOL I know where you are coming from, every summer my dad inundates us with pumpkin, pumpkin for lunch, for tea, for dinner - yuk and he loves the stuff.