Growing your own - is it worth it?

[doversoul1]

Spot on - the frustration when those seeds don't germinate, but the sheer joy when after a week away things have burgeoned. You cannot buy runner beans which come anyway near the ones you pick and eat within 20 minutes. ff - Fresh herbs are great but you can't eat shrubs and hardy perennials!

Not just fresh peas and very young runner beans but maybe because it goes with the cycle of time/year, growing vegetables keeps you sane at some primitive human level.

Talking about sanity, I am beginning to doubt my own sanity as the potato mystery continues. We dug half a row yesterday afternoon and left them on the ground to dry (it rained on them during the night but that’s beside the point). In the morning, I found a few more dug up at the other end on the row, and half a dozen small potatoes scattered amongst leeks and dwarf beans as well as on the grass. Curioser and curiouser…

E-A
Re: climbing French beans: I have been growing then for many years. They are also much easier to pick.

[french frank]

Well, it's an admirable harvest as lunch for one! The first Scarlet Emperors of 2014:



umslops - Get thee behind me!!!

[Anna]

Talking about sanity, I am beginning to doubt my own sanity as the potato mystery continues. We dug half a row yesterday afternoon and left them on the ground to dry ... In the morning, I found a few more dug up at the other end on the row, and half a dozen small potatoes scattered amongst leeks and dwarf beans as well as on the grass. Curioser and curiouser…

Dovers, it seems you have potato fairies living at the bottom of your garden!! (would it be badgers?)

Frenchie, the answer to your feline problem is to acquire a cat of your own, preferably a fierce Ginger Tom - it'll soon see off intruders. Or, do as I have done for the past few years and use a super-sized tub and grow runners in that. Your lunch beans look appetising. Umslops is totally right, it's not the amount that we harvest it's the achievement of putting food on the plate (sort of old hunter-gatherer syndrome maybe?)

[french frank]

Or, do as I have done for the past few years and use a super-sized tub and grow runners in that. Your lunch beans look appetising.

I think I prefer that as a possibility. If I put it in the middle of the yard the beans will be easier to pick than the present arrangement, where the wigwam is spreading over my neighbour's fence and will (I hope) furnish her with a meal or two. The plants have the luxuriance of the rainforest.

[Anna]

My tub is squre so the canes are around the sides and are upright (not wigwam) and tied from cane to cane so the top is also square (means all plants get equal rainfall and sunlight as the centre is open) Over the years I've been doing it this way I've always had very good crops. And of course, you can dance around them in the moonlight to encourage their fertility if you so wish .....

[french frank]

My tub is squre so the canes are around the sides and are upright (not wigwam) and tied from cane to cane so the top is also square (means all plants get equal rainfall and sunlight as the centre is open)

Good tip. I will seek out a tub soonest. I suppose it can be a round tube with the canes placed in a square ... Must see what I can find - or make. Will skip the dancing, though ...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

E-A
Re: climbing French beans: I have been growing then for many years. They are also much easier to pick.

Very well camouflaged though, so many get missed by this slowwitted gardener.

[doversoul1]

Dovers, it seems you have potato fairies living at the bottom of your garden!! (would it be badgers?)

No, badgers would cause more obvious damages and beside, I’d have lost all my carrots by now.

E-A
You can try a purple variety. Less strain on our backs and wits

http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/french-bean-purple-cascade-seeds-pid5063.html

[umslopogaas]

ds, it might be pheasants, apparently they like potatoes.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

You can try a purple variety. Less strain on our backs and wits
http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/fre...s-pid5063.html

Oh, wow, yes. Something to consider next year.

Carrots used to be purple too. They've been reintroduced.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CARROT-PURPLE-DRAGON-FINEST-SEEDS/dp/B009K2VSQO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405259629&sr=8-1&keywords=purple+carrots

[Anna]

Carrots used to be purple too. They've been reintroduced.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/CARROT-PURPL...purple+carrots

My greengrocer sells purple, and yellow, carrots. The purple ones look a bit odd when served up on the plate but are flavoursome but the yellow ones, whilst not as sweet as a standard orange one if you eat them raw, are wonderfully tasty. Worth trying a row of them I think. On the subject of odd coloured vegs, couple of years back you could buy all kinds of purple, black, burgundy, Scottish heitage potatoes in supermarkets - now I never see them. Passing fad or consumer resistance?

[doversoul1]

ds, it might be pheasants, apparently they like potatoes.

Yes, pheasants are the most likely answer but not because they are digging up the potatoes to eat, which I am rather doubtful, since there are no marks on any potatoes. I think they are digging for worms and other goodies where soil is freshly exposed. But this still doesn’t explain why the potatoes are scattered where they have no reason to be. I shall stick to Anna’s Potato Fairies.

[umslopogaas]

well ... if you can produce me photographic or otherwise incontrovertible evidence of potato fairies, I will agree. But until such time, I'm going with pheasants.

[jean]

[doversoul1]

Yes, that must be what I have, jean. Thanks!! I am very pleased with the harvest: a good crop of good size potatoes, hardly any blight or slug damages. The ground looks perfect for planting endives for winter salad. So far, this has been one of the best gardening years for a long time.

We went to the garden centre the other day where they had a sale, and bought a bag full of seeds, hoping that we’d still be fit enough to be digging and planting next year.