Grow your own..

Do you grow your own fruit and vegetables? I am lucky enough to have a wonderful garden, but I’ve only grown the odd fruit or vegetables over the years. It seems a shame that we don’t grow our own fruit and vegetables more often.

In October the children asked whether they could grow pumpkins, and I had to explain that they take quite a long time to grow! But, I promised we’d have a go! So, apparently March to May is the best time to plant your pumpkin seeds, and as it’s March we planted our pumpkin seeds today. Actually, we planted a variety of seeds!

Why grow your own?

Growing our own fruit and vegetables is partly for the fun of it – the novelty of watching the plants develop and the fruits grow. Partly, I hope it may save us some money. But mostly, as I can know that these will really be organic produce.

What to plant!

We decided to plant; tomato seeds, pumpkin seeds, chilli seeds, and strawberry seeds. We also have some basil seeds which we’re going to plant next week (as we ran out of compost!).

Where to plant?!

We’ve planted into little flower pots and a couple of plastic tubs with holes drilled into the base. The children carefully made labels for each set pot, so we know who planted them and what seeds they are! They are already hoping that they will grow the biggest pumpkin, and I’m just hoping we grow a pumpkin at all!! Once we’d planted the seeds, we popped them onto our sunniest windowsill, and now we wait! It’s quite exciting, and I need to start planning ahead for when our seedlings are ready to be moved. I need to plan where to plant them, and whether we use containers or plant them into a sunny area of the garden!