My veg growing sprang from an interest in health. I had done a lot of reading at university – Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and much more – and become convinced of the importance of organic food. I joined the Soil Association, but it was the early 80s and organic food was scarce, so it was logical to grow my own. I left Cambridge with a good degree and was expected to get a well-paid job, but instead I started to grow vegetables. My decision was not met with universal approval.
In my first year, I rotovated with a tractor to break up the pasture, then made beds by hand. I wanted to keep them without rotovating again, so how to proceed? I investigated no-dig methods and read American writer Ruth Stout’s Gardening Without Work. It is the way I have gardened ever since, laying organic matter on to the soil and letting it work its way in, rather than digging it in by hand. There were teething problems: Stout gardened in the eastern US where there can’t be much of a slug problem, as she recommends laying rotten hay over the soil. When I tried it, everything got eaten by slugs. But I found that compost worked well instead of hay or straw in our climate, and now I grow everything like this, selling plenty of vegetables off a quarter acre. The yields are as high, if not slightly higher, as with traditionally dug beds, for a great deal less work. I know because I run trial comparison beds and have done for nine years. I’m convinced the crops have greater vitality, vigour and goodness, too, though these things are hard to measure.
I don’t know if it was the first, but mine was certainly one of the earlier veg box schemes. I had all of this produce and no marketing plan, and I just started putting boxes together. In the late 80s there was a sudden awakening to the problems of supermarket vegetables so, although some people were a bit suspicious at first, there were soon plenty of takers.
I grow lots of winter veg because I like good food, and winter is a long time to go without. People start thinking of sowing winter vegetables around October but by then it is too late – start in spring. Sow parsnips in March and keep on planting for winter all summer long.
My favourite spot
This is a working garden and it is very open – there are no shady bowers or hidden nooks. But I love to stand in a sunny corner to survey everything, and see that everything is growing fine.
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