Kitchen garden project

It's 2010 and I have reached the grand old age of 50, and I decided last year that I wanted to "retire" to rural France by the time I reach 60, so I thought it time to try my hand at partial self-sufficiency, so I know just how much land I will need when I make the move... and also to work out a strategy for doing this in later life when I won't have quite so much physical strength.

I've had allotments in the past, but found that even a short walk / cycle ride makes a huge difference to keeping a kitchen garden maintained, so my experiment is limited to part of my small urban garden - based around a 10 foot by 6 foot greenhouse, with two parallel beds - each 2 foot 6 deep - the one by the fence is rather shady, so I will probably plant some gooseberry and redcurrant bushes. The one adjacent to the greenhouse is crying out to be dedicated to salad.

There is also a sunny spot around the back of the greenhouse - roughly 6 feet square which I plan to use for climbing beans and courgettes - which I have done in the past.

Early April 2010 and my garden was in a sorry state after 8 years of neglect - having fallen victim to one of my periodic losses of heart. :-

Hard work though it has been to clear, there was at least no room for normal weeds under the blanket of bamboo and Virginia creeper - I ended up with a pile of unpromising compost material roughly 6 feet cubed.

After a week of clearing it was starting to look like a garden :-

The greenhouse itself has stood there for over 15 years, and has sadly been under-used - mostly being over-filled with tomatoes and peppers that were imperfectly watered so they tended to burst and only minimally harvested.

The main change - apart from trying my hands at bottling - aiming to replace the large quantities of Lloyd Grossman's pasta sauces I buy when they're on offer - is going to be to only grow fruiting crops along the back, and building a raised bed on the inside of the greenhouse to match the one on the outside - thus, hopefully extending the salad season considerably.

I am also in the process of fine-tuning a multi-tier seed raising facility indoors with bottom heat and fluorescent lighting so I can keep my greenhouse and outside bed continually supplied with young plants.

This is my provisional plan for the outside salad bed :-

I have laid a seep hose at one end - which I hope to operate with the same timer as the drip irrigation in the greenhouse. I'm also planning to irrigate the beans/ courgettes bed behind the greenhouse.

Late June 2010

The greenhouse is well-filled and coming along nicely. I settled on 3 different Italian heirloom peppers - one long one, one slightly fatter one for stuffing, and a small, round, fleshy one. I also have two aubergines, at the end, two mini-cucumbers, and, on the right, 3 plants each of Gardener's Delight and Alicante tomatoes.