Saturday, February 18, 2012

The Goodlife

It has begun - but training didn't. Begun refers to becoming a little bit more self sufficient. A long way from 'the goodlife', maybe, but hopefully I will manage to grow a bit of veg and some herbs. But I'll come back to that in a minute. So, why no training? Well my left calf is quite sore. I think the after effects of Thursday's faster Dundry run has kicked in. Both calves felt tight directly after the run but I didn't give it too much thought. I woke up early to get ready this morning and realised my left calf was really quite bad. Not terrible but enough that I didn't want to be heading off for 25 miles in the mountains in the forecast heavy rain. Wouldn't have been the greatest conditions to struggle along in. It's to be a gentle bike session this afternoon before I head into the garden to begin construction...

Back to the goodlife, with the leg out of action for running, it seemed like an opportune time to go and get a few things to kick off the home growing experiment. Oddly, I also had a tweet out of the blue from someone into self sufficiency and with an omen like that I'd have been stupid to ignore the calling.

Now I don't intend to spend a fortune. That would kind of negate the whole purpose of growing your own but there are a few things I need to get me started. So, using my Christmas B & Q voucher, I bought some wood to build a couple of raised beds. A few pots - and I do intend to become a bit more inventive in the future, and make pots from recycled things. Some compost and, most importantly, some seeds.

In my first season I'm going to try an early crop of potatoes and some beetroot. In the conservatory I'm going to start off some tomatos and chillis and on my sunny kitchen window sill I'm going to try some basil, corriander, chive and rosemary. To start with everything is going in its own pot. Maybe in a year or two I'll learn the art of inter-cropping and working out which things can grow in the same pot but that assumes I will stick with it. I hope I do.

Aah, time for a nap...the completed bed

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