Gardening delights!

My parents have a lovely big garden and as they're both in their 70's now it doesn't get the TLC that dad used to give it when he was younger. He used to grow all our veg - if you couldn't eat it, he didn't grow it!

We've wanted to grow our own veggies, but as our house is only 11 years old, we just don't have the garden space. So, we asked if we could use some of mum and dad's garden and all of dad's gardening expertise he's built up over the last goodness knows how many years to get us started growing our own. The deal is that they don't do any of the manual labour, but get to advise and help in a cerebral way and then take their fill from whatever gets grown.

Will and Jacob went down this morning to start preparing the ground. They moved all the gravel off that was there and, using some wood that dad had, built two frames to make the vegetable beds raised. We need to get them measured up and then to buy some topsoil. We have a compost bin in our garden and we'll no doubt empty mum and dad's too and dig a bit of the good stuff into the new soil.

Dad already has his potatoes planted - we always have freshly dug Christmas Day potatoes straight out of the bins. Tip: Dad grows them in black plastic dustbins and they're bloody gorgeous too! We can accomodate a couple of them in our garden for ourselves so that's on our list to do at home.

We're hoping for onions, carrots, leeks, cabbages (marigolds will poss be grown very close to the cabbages because of the cabbage white butterfly) as well as garden peas, green beans and whatever else dad tells us to grow.

I'll keep you posted with how it's going and upload a couple of photos to show you too.

Wish us luck....