Dave's blog

I’ve been very lucky this year to have not one but three growing spaces – a part of a garden share, the minuscule front (mostly gravelled) garden and back balcony of the maisonette we currently renting (and trying to leave asap) and finally a new growing experience for me, a huge horticultural sized greenhouse.

The greenhouse started off as a project taken up by ex-students on the sustainablee horticulture course I took last academic year.  Unfortunately work commitments, holidays, family and all the other pressures of life meant out of the original ten that were interested only a handful of us were able to keep it going.  Now that handful has dwindled again and the mainstay of the work has fallen on just me and my girlfriend, Ellie. People do come and water now and again and we’ve made a deal that whoever waters can take what they want home from the greenhouse.   This seems the fairest option and a way that the absolute bounty that leaves this enormous glasshouse doesn’t get wasted.

The thing is people just don’t come to water enough, therefore don’t take a share in the harvest and it just keeps producing and producing!  Someone kept chickens in there before we got it and the rich soil mixed with growing under glass has meant we’ve had a tropical allotment on our hands.  It’s been absolutely fantastic and I’ve been able to experiment with growing things I just couldn’t outdoors – we’ve had melons, kiwanos (a cucumber-melon cross with big spikes over it), aubergines, cucumbers, yard-long beans, tree tomatoes, Japanese yams (although I should have really planted these outdoors) and tomatoes by the barrel load.

What’s more I’ve managed to realise my Mayan farming dreams and grow squash, beans and corn together – and it’s worked!!  Usually the beans haven’t grown tall enough and didn’t produce any beans or else they’ve grown too tall and swamped the corn. However, this time all three have thrived and some stray South American weeds (in the form of Amaranth) have even found their way in almost as if to add to the authentic Mexican feel.

We’re not letting anything go to waste and have been giving stuff away or preserving like mad, it’s getting to the stage where we have jars and bottles of food under the bed, under the wardrobe, in the meter cupboard, just about anywhere it will go!  The fridge is constantly heaving and the tiny freezer compartment is next to useless – it just seems to turn ice-cream into runny sweet cold soup before encasing it in a block of ice!  Tonight I think we’re going to make some ketchup and perhaps some cucumber relish  but once it is in bottles then we’ll have to find a new spot for it – perhaps behind some of the books in the book case, there’s still a couple of inches left on those shelves!!

I briefly mentioned in an earlier blog that I am currently writing a new book.  This means I spend hours looking out from my tiny window, in my tiny back room at a huge tree blocking out most of the view.  I talk to myself, I pace, I avoid seeing friends just on the off-chance I might be inspired and some days I write. I’ve an agreement with my publisher that I’d send her the book in sections as, the deadline seemed so far in the future that I found I lacked the drive to get anything done. I came up with this poem to describe the last few months -

The cursor blinks on an empty page

Nothing is flowing but inner rage

And just as I’m giving into despair

I play another game of solitaire.

So with the first deadline looming next week the pressure is on, so much so that I will celebrate my birthday on Friday by writing all day.   I’m gripped with a sense of dull anxiety all the time, the sense that there is always something to do, mainly because there is!

Still the book is now getting written; it’s shaping up and looking good. I’m nearly half way through the minimum word count the publishers want (I’ve done 20 000 of a possible 40 000 words) and it looks like I’ve got a lot more in me.  What’s more it’s looking like it might be a rare thing, a funny gardening book.  I’ve tried to write with the thought of a placating a really grumpy, know it all reader. This might sound like a strange thing to do but having a negative inner dialogue makes for quite positive sounding work.  I imagine someone reading it back thinking a rather less watered down version of, ‘that’s not right, what an idiot’, this makes me tinker with the words in such a way to render this inner critic silent.  It makes the writing process a little painful and I’m sure anyone reading this in the mental health profession would see that as an incredibly unhealthy way to work but, it does seem to get the words on the page.

It’s also written with a mix of speaking to experienced and complete novice gardeners in mind.  I try to be simplistic without being patronising, a difficult balance but hopefully it works.

The book is provisionally titled ‘How to grow your food for free …well almost’ and covers everything in the fruit and vegetable garden from shed building to cheap/free potting compost.  If anyone wants to share ways of saving money and/or recycling in the vegetable garden then I’d like to hear from you.  I’ve covered a lot of things but it never hurts to hear more, it might just be something I’ve not thought about!