Grow Your Own Challange for a Healthier You (with pics)

Ok if you're one of my MFP friends you've probably seen me talk about my veg plot constantly like a raving loony :laugh: but I wanted to share some pics for everyone to see how growing your own fruit and veggies is fun and healthy.

1) You cannot beat eating something you've harvested just 10 minutes ago, the tastes are rich and devine.
2) It gets you out the house! Sure it's hard work but it's great exercise and when you taste what you've grown you'll be hooked for more.
3) It's cost effective. Once you've set up your veg patch and bought your seeds keep back the seeds from the plants for next years crops and you'll never have to buy seeds again!
4) It's a great way to try something that you can't buy in the shops. Come on people break away from the norm of orange carrots and red tomatoes. (Carrots come in purple, yellow, white and orange. Tomatoes come in red, black and yellow. The possibilites of weird colours and wacky shaped veggies is ENDLESS! :happy: )

Here is my veg patch and some of my veggies close up. We also have 3 chickens who give us on average 20+ eggs a week. Anything produced from my garden that we can't eat ourselves is sold to work colleagues and neighbours at a fraction of the cost of the shops and all my veggies are organic. No pesticides etc all natural fertilisers and pest treatments. Any money I make goes towards a new cookbook

Here's some piccies:
[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/VegPatch1-2.jpg[/img]
Stage 1 - Clearing the area

[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/VegPatch2.jpg[/img]
Stage 2 - Get the Beds in

[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/VegPatch3.jpg[/img]
Stage 3 - Finish putting the slate down - we laid weed proof membrane underneath the area to stop as many weeds as possible and give our veggies a fighting chance from the start and slugs and snails don't like the feel of slate so only the most ambitious ones get the priviledge of munching my veggies :laugh: but once discovered my chickens eat them lol.

[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/VegPatch4.jpg[/img]
Stage 4 - Veg Patch finished - all the veggies were transferred from the greenhouse into the raised beds

[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/VegPatch5.jpg[/img]
Stage 5 - Finish of the surrounding raised beds

In the right raised bed we have runner beans, courgettes, broad beans, french beans and a variety of herbs. In the left we HAD (i'll tell why it's HAD in a sec lol) sweetcorn, pumpkin, more runner beans and herbs.

Now for the HAD explanation: With re-doing our kitchen the dog (Pippa the Dalmation) has been sleeping outside recently and got out of her kennel in the middle of the night and decided to replant the left raised bed for me and she ate all of my crops! :explode: so this weekend I will be resowing all the ruined crops.

In the greenhouse we have 5 variety of peppers/chillis, more heat sensitive herbs ie lemongrass, peas and 2 varieites of tomatoes (will be sowing 2 more types this weekend also). We have salad leaves, lettuces and Pak Choi growing in troughs and Strawberries in abundance on our south facing wall.

More piccies:

[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/PeaPods.jpg[/img]
You can't beat the taste of fresh peas I promise you they're devine!

Salads galore...Lettuce...Pak Choi...and Oriental Mixed Salad Leaves
[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/Lettuce.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/PakChoi.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/SaladLeaves.jpg[/img]

Our Chooks:
[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/Chickens.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w511/k2charmed4u/Garden Delights/ChickenHouse.jpg[/img]
Chooks are great! Fresh eggs daily, cheap to feed (ours eat corn, layers pellets, leftover cooked rice and leftover cooked broccoli) they provide an abundance of fertiliser and they eat slugs and snails HURRAH!

I hope this little post inspires you to grow some of your own fruits and/or veggies. Even if it's just a tomato plant or some herbs on your window sill. I promise you it is worth the effort. It was the best decision i've made and I love the fact I can do something I love that's so rewarding while enjoying the glorious summer weather :happy:

It's inspired a whole new range of cooking experiments and goes hand in hand perfectly.

I my veg patch :happy: