Thanks alot and that should get me started with a bit of research - much appreciated
To work out what might work for you a few questions:
How much patience do you have? Asparagus will give you a crop in 3 years, cucumbers in a few weeks.
Can you commit to things like watering? Some things need to be checked daily, others weekly. And nothing worse that getting to the point of a lovely crop and going away for a weekend and coming back to find everything collapsed!
Are there particular veg you like but can’t find, or are very expensive?
How much space do you have?
I would start small and focus on one or two things?
Courgettes are the absolute beginners crop, and we grow Lebanese ones that are much nicer than in the shops. But generally a courgette is a courgette!
Tomatoes are the ones for me where home grown is sooo much better than shop bought. And all you need is a big pot.
That certainly gives some good ‘food’ for thought I do have plenty of space and am pescatarian, and eat alot of vegetables, so getting some great tasting vegetables really does appeal to me. I think the main point I need to consider, reading all your questions, is the one of watering, as it would be so disappointing to nurture something, then suddenly see it fail after not watering for a couple of days - need to bear that in mind! For this year at least, I think I’ll kick off with some of the ‘simpler’ easier to manage veg and then see how I get on, before embarking on the asparagus commitment, even though I do love asparagus!
I had NEVER grown anything before moving to France, I honestly never thought I’d ever be one of “those” gardeners. Trees, I could bore you to death about, but veg, salad and gardening pftt…
Fast forward to living in France and I can’t say either of us know why exactly, but my wife and I both started talking about growing our own veg and salad, or at least trying it.
It took us a few years to get round to getting started.
This is our third year of growing and my advice is just buy some seeds and make some space, read the packet and plant or pot.
I think you’ll get a lot of joy from watching what you plant grow, and eating something you’ve grown yourself (Cucumbers esp) is one of life’s little pleasures.
When you make a mistake, just ask for help why, or research and try something different next time.
I used the RHS website https://www.rhs.org.uk/ as a starting point and my thirst grew from there.
Now I have created a spreadsheet tracking everything, what seeds, where I bought them, dates seeded, dates transferred to pots, dates seeded again for continuous supply during the year, dates planted out, dates harvested, dates of last and first frost AND NOW the dates of “the Saints de Glace” which, as “we” all know, is a well known folk lore
Don’t delay, try gardening, however small a place you have I’m certain you can grow something.
Great encouragement thanks and certainly inspires me to run out and start planting And great tip re the rhs site
Hi @letsmile
Just start small, even one pot.
@JaneJones gave some great advice and input.
Plant what you can manage without it becoming a chore, tomatoes in pots in a sunny spot could be a great start.
We sprinkled " a few" courgette seeds around on a patch of dirt about 1 meter by 1 meter, no reading the packet, no measuring etc. Boy oh boy, did we ever have a ton of courgettes that year, it was like they waited till you had harvested everything you could see, and as you turned your back and started heading to the house “boom” lots more magically appeared - honestly they just suddenly appear.
We were giving away courgettes left, right, and center, we made some new friends through that crop.
Courgette soup, courgette fritters, etc. - it was like an excerpt from Forest Gump - “you can grill um, you can…”
Do I have too much time on my hands… Is it me…
That certainly gave me a smile - just imagining me being overrun with veg like triffids
And why can’t they sell them in half?
Anyway, we have problem growing them, but the first of th asparagus was wonderful for supper last night.
When in the UK, I used to never put plants out until I returned home from the Royal Bath and West Show, which was the weekend after Spring Bank Holiday, i.e. early June. It was simply because I never knew a frost occurring after the Show.
You can of course put plants out earlier but then you have to tiresomely check the weather forecast and protect your plants if a frost is predicted.
French weather is at least two or three weeks ahead of the UK and so I think 13th May is a great date. I’m going to adopt it here.
If you are fortunate to have a well this may not be an issue. We have an underground water tank and by mid-April this year it was half empty (normally it takes until July). I’ve made a decision this year to abandon any attempt to grow veg. because I need the rain water for the pots and the borders round the gite. If I have to start using tap water it’s just not worth the money.
For a beginner i wouln’t bother about sowing from seed in your first year. You’ll need pots, conpost. Bordeaux mixture (maybe) and something to serve as a propogator, etc etc. Anfdthen your fridge will be full of seed paçkets!
Your local market willbhave a stand selling veg for about 80c aplant. But if you haven’t alrrady get a water butt!
And choose your preferred saint for fhe starting pistol
saint Mamert, saint Pancrace et saint Servais, traditionnellement fêtés les 11, 12 et 13 mai de chaque année - the saints de glace
It is the ice saints that week, you can get a cold snap but it is the last
What are you talking about Mariner.
Anyway a cuecumber modifys a sandwich or salad and has fun when it is pickled but apart from that it is bland and one can live without them
But I do buy them and yes they are far more exspensive here than the UK.
like almost all food items.
And I prefer it that way, because there is some chance that they are coming from a local supplier and he/she is getting a living wage.
Hello @SuePJ
I agree with you completely, so strongly that I can feel a new thread topic coming on.
Henri
Hmmm, but do they have the “ice saints” in all the Hellholes… (asking for a friend)
Just a gentle double entendre, all part of the fun.
It’s interesting talking to people about food prices going up. Food in the UK is just astonishingly cheap, and although some of that is supply-chain efficiency and better manufacturing systems, some of it is simply down to bulk purchasers squeezing the supplier. I can’t ever remember a time when good food was so cheap and easily available, and formed such a low part of weekly outgoings.
I’d much rather pay a ‘right price’ for something that goes to give someone a liveable wage and the meat to be raised in good conditions, but at the same time it’s easy for me to want that because I can afford to. But I’d also prefer that any price premium I paid didn’t simply go to giving the retailer a higher profit.
What do these people who grow cucumbers receive as a living wage…you could have an idea.
It seems so hard for everyone to earn a decent wage.
For instance most till staff in supermarkets only offer part time positions to
employee’s this is of benefit to the employer.
So those who work with cucumbers are lucky here in France it seems.
It’s what happens when big supermarkets try to compete on price alone, but quality inevitably suffers at the end of the day (not to mention welfare standards for farm animals).