Our gardening adventure, with 3 other families.

Growing vegetables is a great way to save money, eat the freshest produce and get exercise whilst learning about seasonality and sustainability.  It is brilliant for kids to learn where their vegetables come from and how to grow their own.  It is also much cheaper than the gym as an effective way to fight flab and banish bingo wings, with the added bonus of a healthy supper afterwards.

My friend Lucy is a lovely lass whose son attends the same school as my youngest two daughters.  She has has generously offered to share the 5 vegetable beds in her backyard with us and 2 other families.  Her garden had been neglected for some time as it is far too much work for Lucy to tackle on her own.  After a hearty lunch and a hot cuppa we set to work.

At the beginning of this afternoon the garden looked like this:

We then set to work, 4 women and a toddler, and after 3 solid hours of hard work the garden now looks like this:

Three out of the 5 vegetable beds have been double dug and the hard, heavy soil has been aerated and broken up.  We are all exhausted!  It was loads of fun though and Alfie the toddler had loads of fun spotting all the creatures in the garden.  Aside from worms, snails, slugs and the occasional centipede there were 7 frogs found throughout the afternoon.



Frogs can be a little bit scary if you've never seen a real one up close before.



We also unearthed a large amount of spuds which we will all be having as part of our dinner this evening.

We ended up with a pile twice as big as this in the end.

It was a brilliant afternoon, great conversation, lots of strenuous exercise and fresh spuds for dinner.  What's not to like?!  We shall be getting all of our children to help out with the garden now that the site is relatively clear and much safer than it was.  My 3 girls cannot wait to don their wellies and get gardening.

We need to get planting for the winter now that the beds are ready for planting.  Any recommendations for what we should/could plant would be brilliant.  They will need to be fairly hardy vegetables, and feed lots of hungry mouths.

Another friend of mine with a double allotment needs a hand to manage her vegetable plots too so we shall be visiting there once a week to help her out as well.  Bring on the exercise, vegetables and fun for all the families involved!

But wait there's more . . . . .

Inspired by our session this afternoon I worked hard for an hour and cleared some of our vegetable beds at home.  There is no before photo as I was too ashamed at the state of them. LOL

I now have 3 deep 1m x 1m beds and 2 shallow 1m x 1m beds ready for planting.  I still have greens throughout the rest of the garden, strawberry plants, raspberry canes, rhubarb and herbs growing happily.  What should I plant in my garden beds?