I may never have had a garden until now but my grandparents gave me an amazing insight into gardening, especially growing vegetables.Beyond the back gate of their modest terraced cottage lay a sizeable plot of land where they grew everything imaginable - marrows and pumpkins, strawberries and raspberries, beans and peas - even neatly trained brambles for blackberries. There were apple and pear trees and row upon row of carrots, parsnips, cauliflower and potatoes. In the sheds were chickens and geese and there was usually a nervous-looking sheep lurking in a fenced off area at the end of the plot.
I spent much of my summer holidays helping my grandmother in her vegetable garden and always dreamed of having one of my own.
Now the dream is finally becoming a reality, but it's difficult to know where to begin.
When I arrived just a few weeks ago, there was already a raised bed installed on one side of my garden, brimming with overgrown, unharvested crops including chard, onions and potatoes. There was also a well-rotted compost heap and a good supply of bamboo growing in the corner behind the shed.With a borrowed fork, I dug out most of the crops from the bed but left in some of the potatoes, transferring the rest into tubs which I put onto the patio area outside my back door.
But by late July, my options of what to grow were somewhat limited so I wasted no time in double digging the bed (still with only a fork), mixing some compost deep in the soil before sowing a selection of salad crops, beetroot, onions and a few dwarf french beans. I bought the seeds from Wilko for just under a fiver.
