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 Veg Journal

Welcome to our Veg Journal - a diary recording all the day-to-day observations we make about our veg plot.

If you're keeping a veg plot of your own and want to compare how you're doing, this is the place to come. You can go straight to our Journal for 2012 or browse through all our Journal entries using the menus on the left hand side of the page or the links in the Summaries section below. There are lots of photos that we've taken throughout the year to look at as well. Coming soon there will be links to our new "Growing Guides" section where you will find more details on each type of vegetable we've grown.

We were inspired to keep a daily journal after receiving a copy of Carol Klein's "Grow Your Own Veg Journal" as a gift about a year after we'd started to renovate the veg plot. Each month in the book is split into four "weeks" which equate to either 7 or 8 days, and that's how we've arranged the Veg Journal pages here, so if you think our weeks are a little long, it's done on purpose!

Year by Year Summaries

2009 - This was the first year we had paid any attention to the area of land at the bottom of our garden since we built the potting shed on it about 10 years previously. During that time it had become covered in weeds, mostly nettles and brambles, not to mention the leftover piles of bricks and bags of sand which had been stacked there from our building work, so it was quite a hard task to clear the plot in the first place. However, by the end of 2009 we had built 8 raised beds complete with paving around them, we had erected the greenhouse, and we had a very respectable crop of vegetables to show for all that effort!

Click on the photo for a larger version.

The veg plot in autumn with raised beds completed (2010)

2010 - This year we began recording our veg growing activities on an almost daily basis with the hope that we can compare notes on how well things grow, together with yields etc., year on year. In 2010 we completed the last 2 raised beds in our original plan and continued to renovate the potting shed. We decided to tailor-make some nets from Enviromesh to protect the brassicas and root vegetables, which took several months. In the second half of the year we successfully tried our hand at chutney making, and in December we had the coldest spell of weather for years.

2011 - We began to get into our stride in the vegetable garden this year, although there were still a few surprises. After a very cold winter and dry spring, the crops of potatoes in particular were much lower than in 2010, but our strategy of sowing the tomato seed a month earlier worked to some extent and we had a bumper crop. We planted out the asparagus into its permanent bed, and fitted cupboards with worktops into the potting shed. Our biggest surprise of the year was the sheer quantity and variety of jams, jellies, chutneys, pickles and wine that we made - we need lots more empty jars and bottles for next year!

2012 - Our latest journal entries are here...

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