Daisy Green Shares Land

Nicola Alexander, Founder daisygreenmagazine shares her growing pains

Here at Daisy Green cottages we strive to grow our vegetables. Owning a house with a garden for the very first time was thrilling and the plans to become self sufficient were set in place. Now please understand, previous to this, I had no more than three potted Peace Lilies in my flat so I was heavily reliant on my husband.

Slowly we cleared the garden, built four raised beds and started sowing the seeds. The conservatory became a greenhouse with seed trays on every available surface.

As the spring turned into summer, the tomatoes grew taller than me and were extremely fruitful.

Have you ever grown your own? They taste is so much more distinctive, there is no plastic waste and you can just pick them when you need them. Spinach, lettuce and rocket grew without any problems. Most delightful.

Of course there were failures. The carrots were tiny and frankly the most bizarre shapes, and the potatoes were gnarled and inedible.

This year, we have started early. Mr Daisy Green has started his own blog to share our successes (and failures) and to encourage others to grow their own, and we recently chalked out a section of our Editor, Sallyanne's, garden to help her and her young family join in the fun. The plans are simple: spend some time every weekend teaching the children to grow their own food.

It has been widely reported that many children simply don't know where their food comes from, something I can testify to being a teacher myself. Kids love to get down and dirty and they are always amazed to see food growing. And the beauty is, you can use an old egg shell and some cress seeds placed on a window sill, you don't even need a garden!

For all the toil, dirt and occasional creepy crawly that gets in the way, last year I learned that growing your own fruit and vegetables is rewarding, cheap, less wasteful, has no food miles attached and it simply tastes better.

www.daisygreenmagazine.co.uk
Mr Daisy's gardening blog

Photo © daisygreenmagazine 2009