Our first vegetables grown in pots in our tiny back yard weren’t anything spectacular, but they were edible and actually quite delicious!
Growing veg as a beginner doesn’t have to be complicated. We gave it a go and it worked!
We didn’t have any fancy tools or a greenhouse, just some cheap buckets and bags of compost.
I’d grown some strawberries, peas and tomatoes the year before from plug plants I’d bought from a garden centre and this is the easiest way to start because the plants are already partly grown and don’t need too much attention.
Kids love to get their hands dirty and join in with gardening so letting them help was a top priority for me.
I asked them what they would like to grow and we decided on carrots and peas. I also wanted to have a try at growing veg like potatoes and onions so off to the garden centre we went.
As usual, when I was looking at the seeds I got carried away and ended up buying more than I’d planned!
When we got home, we had a mini greenhouse (one of those plastic ones) and our seeds which were:
- Peas
- Carrots
- Onions
- Leeks
- Courgettes
- Spring Onions
- Parsnips
Also seed potatoes – I had no idea that you planted an actual potato in the ground instead of a little seed – I was very confused at first when I couldn’t find them!
So we all got to work in March, following the directions on the seed packets. We sowed the potatoes, carrots, onions, spring onions, parsnips and leeks directly into buckets and used left over fruit trays from the supermarket to sow the peas and courgettes.
We potted on the courgettes and peas when they were big enough, before putting them in their own buckets in early June.
I checked on my plants daily, as did the kids, loving watching how they progressed. However, it wasn’t nearly as easy as it had been with the plug plants.
Because we’d bought so many seeds, there wasn’t enough room for all the buckets in our back yard and we’d had to put some at the front of the house. I’d never tried to grow anything there before so I thought nothing of it.
The courgette plants grew very quickly and very big! I got excited when I saw a little courgette growing, but almost every time it was almost ready to pick, the birds beat me to it and ate it first!
I did manage to get a few towards the end of the season and they were so good, much better than the ones I used to buy.
Also, one day when I went to check on my onions (which had grown to a decent size) I noticed the bucket was full of ants and all of my onions were covered in aphids. I didn’t know what I could do about it at the time so I gave up on them.
On a good note, the peas were amazing and we built a frame out of canes to support them so they could grow taller and produce more peas – they were so delicious.
We were all getting very excited about the potatoes. They had huge foliage that was threatening to take over the whole back yard and my Son really wanted to dig up the carrots to see what they looked like under the soil. I patiently explained that we couldn’t just have a look at one and put it back. We waited until late August to have a little peek and everything was looking ready.
We couldn’t help ourselves and harvested everything in one day, but it was so exciting, especially with the carrots and potatoes. For them, it was like digging for buried treasure.
The kids were so happy when they saw what we had and helped me to pick everything, saying they would definitely grow veg with me next year. I was ecstatic that we had done it ourselves and while our veg wasn’t huge or in a great amount, it was grown with love at our home. That just made everything so much more special and I knew that I was never going to get bored of it.
I was already planning for the next season when I had a huge surprise.
I was asked by a friend if I wanted an allotment plot and it changed everything!
Read my other post My Allotment Transformation to see how I transformed my plot (which was actually an abandoned strip of land with tons of rubbish buried on it, or visit my YouTube channel.
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