Growing from seed is by far the cheapest way of growing butternut squash, as plants sell in the UK for the high price of around £6. My packet of seed was bought from the internet, but next year I’ll probably just save the seed from one of the squashes and use those. It seems such a waste to throw seed from the squash into the bin.

After leaving the pots in the conservatory for literally ages, I began to worry my seeds weren’t germinating and started hunting for tips.  Butternut squash like a warm temperature (around 17 degrees c) to germinate, and the conservatory just wasn’t warm enough.  Sure enough, within one night of moving the pots onto the kitchen window ledge they had germinated.  I’ve never seen a seedling take off so quickly; one night, nothing, and in the morning a good inch of growth.

Here’s how to do it, which if all goes well will result in a healthy crop come autumn:

1. Begin in April by filling individual pots (as pictured) with compost.
2. With your finger poke a hole approximately 1 inch / 2.5cm.  Drop in the squash seed.
3. Water the pots, then place indoors on a window cill.
4. Watch and wait…if the compost begins to dry out, water.  After 7 to 10 days, all being well, you will have rapidly growing seedlings.
5. After about 3 weeks start taking the pots outside during the day, bringing them in again at night.  This “hardens” them off, ready for whatever the weather throws at them.
6. Another week or so and they are ready for planting out.  Dig holes about a spade’s depth and part fill with compost.
7. Plant the squash, backfilling the hole.
8. Keep well watered; give a liquid tomato feed every couple of weeks once fruit appears.

Gosia’s temper is lasting at the moment but it isn’t likely to do for much longer. There is literally nowhere to sit in the said conservatory, every inch of space being taken up by seed trays, pots and the like. It’ll all be over soon, I promise her, just as soon as the seedlings are big enough to be planted out.

Pictured are Kohl Rabi (above) and Leeks (below). In seed trays we also have brussel sprouts (growing), cabbage (no sign yet), and butternut squash (today!), amongst other things.

I’m now beginning to wonder if I have got a little carried away. Gosia really isn’t impressed with the 5 varieties of cabbage I’ve bought, given that we eat no more than one a month!

Normally winter also means cold and ice, something Mother Nature appears to have forgotten so far this year (instead bringing wind and floods). These milder temperatures mean I have been spending more time outdoors than usual – something which fits just nicely with my fresh new allotment, just crying out to be planted.

A few weeks ago we made a start by planting onions, garlic and shallots, closely followed by some over-wintering carrots (fingers crossed on that one), Hamburg parsley, broad beans and spinach. In a bid to make early progress next year we started browsing the internet for winter planting suggestions and surprisingly learned that it is a perfect time to plant bare root soft fruit bushes.

A week or so after making our selections we received a delivery of rhubarb, strawberries and primocane (autumn fruiting) raspberries. This weekend has seen us me (Gosia and Mia gave up and waited in the car) planting these, eager with anticipation for what next year might bring. Others on the allotment were not so cheery, and instead could be seen repairing their sheds, which have presumably blown apart during the recent storms. Just a couple of fields away the River Humber had over-topped its banks flooding a local tileyard and hotel, now leaving the roadside ditch standing threateningly full to the brim of water.

We’ve decided to do a 4 bed system on our allotment, which means that 3 beds rotate and the fourth is dedicated to fruit – plants that with a bit of luck stay in place for many years. This weekends plantings mean that this bed is now almost full of several varieties of strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb, leaving us little space left for our rather ambitious plans which involved currant bushes and the like.

Working outdoors in the (comparatively) cold weather makes you appreciate coming in to the warm even more. As I type this Gosia & Mia are budy in the kitchen making gingerbread biscuits for the Christmas tree, and the house is filled with the traditional fragrances of spices and pine.

Now, where did I put that sloe gin?

The first half of the year had so much rain I doubted anything would grow. Slugs munched away happily at both the hamburg parsley (a root vegetable like a parsnip) and the beans that I had held out so much hope for, but for some reason left alone the peas. The chilli plants received a good munching from aphid infestations while in the conservatory, but seem to have cleared up well when relocated to the patio. On the same note, the dwarf apple tree we planted earlier this year grew really well but is now also infested by aphids, with ants seen constantly running up and down the trunk.

Our decision to plant fruit seems to have paid dividends; the black, red and white currants planted last year have given us an abundance of fruit (which grows on last years branches), as have the raspberry canes. The latter is the gift which keeps on giving, as we’ve now had a solid 2 months of raspberries with more still to pick. Our home grown blueberries are also delicious (if not entirely plentiful), as are the strawberries which grow in hanging baskets on the walls around the sides of the house.

I still haven’t mentioned the vegetable plot, a small raised bed stuffed with carrots and celeriac and lined with tomato plants on one side and gooseberry bushes (in their first year, so no fruit yet) on the other. In fact this plot is so full I’m considering applying for an allotment for next year.

We have a small garden, but we’ve managed to squeeze all of this in to it without the need to destroy too much of our lawn that Mia loves to play on (in fact, she seems to enjoy stealing raspberries straight from the bush more than the extra space). Between this and foraging for the odd bit of free food (plums and blackberries free for the takers right now) I feel we’ve managed to lessen our dependency on the supermarkets – which seem to be on an endless path of destruction throughout the retail industry – by a fairly sizable amount.

There’s really no excuse not to do the same. If you live in an apartment you can grow herbs on a window ledge; if you have a tiny border at the front of your house you could fill it with quick growing salad vegetables. Whatever space you have available, growing something that you can pick and eat is immensely rewarding and fun.

What do you grow in your garden?

Micro Leaves – the perfect garnish

Micro leaves. The lazy persons garden, or the saviour of the garnish?

Tiny vegetable leaves, “micro leaves” are grown similar to cress in small trays lined with tissue paper, cotton wool or similar, and harvested while still small. They look ultra-cool sprinkled sparingly around the edge of a plate or top of a salmon fillet, and are great mixed into salads.

Growing these flavour filled little leaves is really easy. Here’s how to do it:

1. Buy the seeds.  I used Marshalls (no, that’s not a sponsored link), but there’s many more on the net.
2. Line a tray / dish / old egg box with a double layer of moist tissue paper.
3. Sprinkle the seeds thickly.
4. Place on a sunny window-ledge, and keep moist. The seeds will germinate in just a day or so.
5. Keep moist at all times, and harvest after a couple of weeks.