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Growing under glass.
Filed under GeneralAug 31I’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 sustainable
e 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!!
