We Love Cooking! [Search results for kitchen garden diary] 

Last year I tried my hand at growing a vegetable garden and although there were major fails like when my spinach went to seed and when my courgettes were eaten by slugs, there were also major success stories like when I harvested big heavy baskets of broad beans and pulled mysterious looking red cabbages from their stubborn roots! Those were the really proud moments of the whole experiment and made it all worthwhile! I made the conscious decision not to blog about it last year, partly because I was totally winging it and partly because I wanted to prove to myself I could do it, but I think this year it's time to let everyone in! I am still by no means in anyway an expert so I would like this little kitchen garden diary to be more of a journey which I will share any tidbits of the knowledge I pick up along the way which hopefully might inspire to get into the garden yourself!

My plans for the vegetable garden this year are already under way, and I have been speaking to lots of gardening people in the know, a few of whom will be popping up on the blog in the coming months. One of the many things I learned from last years experiment was to get as much advice as possible. The people I have spoken to, from home growers to professional gardeners are all so incredibly passionate about what they do and are more than happy to have lengthy conversations about what to grow, when to grow it and even the best ways to cook them. If you do know someone who grows their own veg, give them a call, sometimes the best advice you can get is from people you already know. An essential buy for me last year was a really decent book about growing vegetables, "Grow Vegetables" by Alan Buckingham is fairly extensive and details growing in even the smallest spaces, also after watching Carol Klein's passionate BBC series I bought her book, "Grow Your Own Veg" which is a pretty straightforward and informative book.

You can plan your garden in advance earlier in the year, but March is really go time in the gardening world, with a huge variety of seeds being recommended to be sown now. I have been lucky enough to nab my lovely aunts back garden to grow my veggies which has now become my very own little allotment. I am pretty sure she has mixed feelings about me trudging through the house with muddy feet but it all pays off when the veggies arrive. I was busy in the garden yesterday as Sean Gallagher from patchworkveg.com installed 3 amazing raised veg boxes which are perfect for growing in. I will be showing you the pics from the full installation process during the week because these beds are ideal for people who haven't grown before! I am heading out to pick up some seeds today which can be sown this month, I will be picking up onions, cabbage, broad beans, peas, beetroot, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes and spinach. Another tip is that Lidl and Aldi both have really cool mini greenhouse sets you can pick up on offer at the moment, they are perfect for starting seeds out and mean you can keep them outside without the frost getting at them!

I have been procrastinating over getting the garden together since my last post, I kept putting it off, the weather wasn't good, I didn't have the seeds, I hadn't decided what I wanted to to grow, it was too much work, my feet hurt, Brothers and Sisters was on etc etc etc! The good news is I finally got around to it this week, thanks to the fantastic weather we've been having, I had no excuse but to get out there and get things started.

I have kind of made it sound like I have been doing absolutely nothing, but my little mini greenhouse already has some savoy cabbages, purple broccoli, and chili peppers which are sprouting and looking great! I think the breakthrough in terms of movement has to be the work I did in the garden on Monday. Since Sean installed the raised veg boxes, the layout has changed around a bit so I figured it was time to give the layout a little change around. As you can see from the photo above, I have added a little more structure by breaking the plot in two, which will hopefully mean I can make it a bit more pretty rather than the boring rows which left me with 25 cabbages last year!

The other exciting part of the garden is of course the fantastic raised veggie boxes! I decided to take Sean's advice and break the boxes up into square feet which will all be filled with different veg. I even marked it out with some string and thumb tacks to make it a little more visible until a little bit of growth starts. I did cheat a little by picking up some already grown seedlings of pak choy and some tender purple sprouting broccoli, from the garden centre just to add a little bit of colour at this early stage.

Apart from the ready sprouted stuff, I have sown, beetroot, rainbow carrots, red apache spring onions, spinach, and radishes all in the raised boxes, and some rooster potatoes, broad beans and peas in my newly established ground plot. The whole garden is really starting to take shape and I can't wait till things start sprouting out of the ground! On the other side of the garden I have some more space I'm prepping which is hopefully going to by a big pumpkin patch, with the hopes that were going to be able to pick our own pumpkins to carve for Halloween. Very exciting stuff! I went in to a fantastic little garden shop in the heart of Dublin on Capel St. the other day called Hacketts and they have a great selection of seeds, so I'm going to head in again tomorrow to pick up some Jerusalem artichokes and some more seeds to get going in the mini green house. Apparently Lidl have some great garden equipment at the moment so you might be able to pick up some good deals. April definitely is the month to get sowing, so if you are contemplating growing, do it sooner rather than later for some of the major veg. Also if you are interested in getting some raised veggie boxes yourself make sure to check out Sean's website patchworkveg.com, where he has lots of top tips for growing! Oh and if you have grown you're own veg garden before, what are you growing, and do you have any suggestions for interesting veggies I should be growing?

On Saturday, Sean from patchworkveg.com came over to the garden to install 3 raised veggie boxes. Sean set up the company only very recently as away to diversify from his other company Galcon, where he works as a building contractor. The company grew out of Sean's love for growing veg himself, and throughout the whole installation process he was full of tips on what to grow and when to grow it. This guy knows his veggies!
When I grew veggies last year, my patch was a little disorganised and was basically a sprawling mess, so this year I think by getting these raised boxes it will just give the garden itself a little more structure. Even with them installed there is plenty of room to grow even more veg in the ground around them.

Sean arrived with a trailer full of dirt and 3 heavy duty boxes all assembled and ready to go. Once the boxes were in place, it was a case of levelling them so they were completely flat on the ground and unfortunately the garden is a little bit irregular so there was a big decision as to which wall we would have them opposite too. When the boxes were in place, the real hard work started and the lads, got stuck in lugging basket fulls of the really great quality soil which Sean told me is full of organic matter which is super for growing the best veggies!

The raised beds are perfect for first time vegetable growers because you split the boxes into square feet and grow a different veg in each square foot. Sean has a link to great website on his blog where you can plan each vegetable box so that you know what is growing where and when to plant it.

I did offer to help with all the lifting by the way, I promise! When the lads had finished filling the boxes they compacted the soil and made them nice and snug. The beds are quite deep so you can plant quite a lot in each square foot! Sean makes the veggie boxes custom made so you can order whatever size you want really and I just think they make super feature in the garden. If you want to check out pricing head over to Sean's website patchworkveg.com where he has all the info about the beds and even offers lots of growing tips for first time growers!
Finally take a quick peak at this interview I recorded with the man himself!