Self sufficient?

I'm rubbish at growing veg. It's true. At the back of the cottage, in the area where an old garage stood I decided to create a veg garden. I was lucky enough to be given two greenhouses and I made some raised veg beds a couple of years ago and I can count the amount of produce I've got from the plot on one hand.

This year, the general population seems to have gone garden crazy with the effects of the pandemic whether that has been finishing off long-awaited garden tidy-ups or as in many cases, especially with the panic shopping at the beginning of lock-down. I'm not quite sure of the rationale, whether folk thought that there would be an interruption to the food supply and there would be shortages or what, but for ages you couldn't get seeds for love nor money. It is also incredibly difficult to reach full self-sufficiency in most people's back gardens. But that said the rush to grow-your-own by so many people is a trend that I hope continues into the future because you just can't beat the satisfaction of digging up your own veg, washing off the soil and cooking and eating it all within the hour. You get a real connection with the food you eat and get a greater understanding of the complexity of actually growing food as well as an appreciation of the process of tiny seed being nurtured to harvest.

But, if anyone thinks its straight forward they are in for a shock! My veg garden is in a reasonable location, it does get a bit of shade in the afternoons, its quite windy...but everything is up here, the raised beds have good soil and have hoops with netting to keep the plants safe and yet for the last three years my attempts to grow my own have been rubbish. I do also have, as my friend described it "a duck deficiency" that's a slug problem to you and me. The slimy little gits frequently avail me of any nice lush looking plants long before they reach the fruiting stage. This year I constructed a special high salad trough and the buggers still managed to climb the legs and leave their tell-tale-trails all over my rocket.

I keep one greenhouse exclusively for the tomatoes and cucumbers and this year its now the middle of September and the tomatoes only set fruit a couple of weeks ago, and not that many either. Now all I have are a handful of green tomatoes that I doubt will ripen. The two cucumber plants yielded half a dozen fruits. The chard bolted, the broccoli flowered, the first peas sown rotted in the pots, so did the runner beans and out of the three rows of carrots sown, I got enough to make a pot of soup! Granted it was a mighty fine pot of soup.

The only thing that did well this year were the strawberry plants, which incidentally were crap last year. I have about 10 spring onions that have taken an eternity to grow but at last are ready to harvest. None of the beetroot or parsnips germinated and I had blossom end rot on the one surviving courgette plant. So I dined out for ages on strawberries, but the point is, if I relied on my home grown produce to survive I would be looking considerably thinner now.

So I have a dilemma. Is it really worth growing your own tomatoes when with what I have spent on compost etc I could have bought a shed load from the shops? I have to say I like that I can grow cucumbers to a decent edible size....shop bought ones are just too big, and one plant really does give enough produce for the summer as I only tend to eat cucumber in a sandwich (with the crusts still on cos I'm such a rebel). I've grown chard a few times but never bothered to eat it, in fact to this day I have never even tasted chard. I like to have a few carrots for making soup and unless you can buy them loose, prepackaged ones always spoil before I am able to use them all, and being able to keep the carrots in the ground until I want to use them. But is growing your own really more effort for little reward? Maybe growing your own is as much about evaluating what you eat, as much as anything?

I'm not sure if I will bother with veg growing next year, maybe the raised beds will have flowers for cutting instead.