What started you off on your vegetable growing career?

[Primrose]

We have myriad veggie growers on here and it intrigues me how we all started off our vegetable growing interest.

I think my first experience was as a small child in primary school immediately after the war watching a dried runner bean sprout in a jam jar edged in between the glass and a sheet of wet blotting paper ! And of course seeing my parents growing rows of beans and tomatoes in the garden during the war.

But my first serious vegetable growing started in the year I got married and had a garden of my own. Since then not a year has passed without my tending a vegetable garden of some sort. I remember growing my first climbing beans and tomatoes and immediately I was hooked. Once you have a few successful attempts at something it seems only natural to go on and expand your horizons. .

What did it for all of you ?

[Pa Snip]

Just fancied growing our own. Got a allotment around 1990 but age old story it was crap soil and full of stones , also found we just didn't have the time it needed so gave it up after a year and turned the back garden over to veg again.

Eventually outgrew (pardon the pun) the back garden so put name down for another plot.
Am on same site as that original 1990 plot and I can tell you one thing for sure.................................. that plot hasn't changed !!

[robo]

Started when I first got married probably through discussions with my father in law my wife has always been into flowers she's got the finest green fingers one could wish for she is forever taking cuttings from anywhere I've not known one cutting fail, I started growing veg and keeping chickens in our garden as our three girls got bigger it was my part of the garden that needed to be turned into lawns but I still carried on growing in our greenhouse ,when I retired I managed to get a plot now that's slowly being taken over by a green fingered woman but we both get a lot of pleasure from it

[Pa Snip]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ is resisting the temptation to make any observation about green fingers and suggestions of visits to the doctors

[robo]

Pa snip feel free to fire away

[Pa Snip]

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[Primrose]

I remember the first year we got married, I grew an excellent crop of beans and tomatoes. My father in law came to stay for a week-end and congratulated my husband, who barely knows a week from a flower, on his expertise. He said he didn't know his son "had it in him" to take so well to gardening !! I was exceedingly miffed and told him it was all my own work.

His face said it all and he commented that he didn't believe a woman was capable of such skills. I was even more miffed! Admittedly he never made the same mistake again when he visited and viewed the vegetable garden!

[FredFromOssett]

I suppose the seed was sown in me when I was a nipper, early post-war, when I used to go with Dad & Grandad to their allotment to (supposedly) help - more realistically to get me out of Mother’s hair for an hour or two. I don’t remember doing anything very constructive there, beyond pulling (and eating) rhubarb.

Although I also used to love watching and being with my Grandfather when he tended the veg patch and greenhouse at home, again I never really did much beyond helping to wash flower pots and mixing the compost for his seed trays; ah! the smell of those filled trays being sterilised in the kitchen oven!

I then did very little real gardening until l I retired, although I had vaguely considered an allotment occasionally, but not pursued it through lack of time. When I finally did take on a plot, nearly 20 years ago, I was almost totally reliant on Hessayon’s Vegetable Expert book and the subconscious knowledge gleaned through osmosis from watching Grandad. Since then it has been a case of trial and (plenty of) error, assisted in no small part by KG forum.

[Diane]

I learnt from my grandad - who was a gardener at the local "big house". First thing he showed me was how to plant potatoes - and I was quite young - the spade was taller than I was.

[FredFromOssett]

I learnt from my grandad - who was a gardener at the local "big house". First thing he showed me was how to plant potatoes - and I was quite young - the spade was taller than I was.

I am still using my Grandfather's spade. About 10 years ago I had to fit a new handle, as the original broke, but the blade knocks spots off any others I've had. Over the years it has sharpened itself to an almost knife-like edge, from where he used to mix his potting compost on the cement back yard, and will cut through the soil superbly. At a rough guess, the blade must be something like a hundred years old. It has certainly turned a few hundreds of tons in its time,

[Pawty]

I grew up seeing both my dad and grandad growing veg.

But what drove me to get the allotment was a need to be outside and get a hobby where I can completely switch off (I'm not that keen on running). I have quite a stressful job which is mostly office based and need a complete change sometimes where I don't have to focus on anything except digging!

I've grown herbs, tomatoes and chillis for years in pots on the patio but I needed more. I love seeing a seed turn into a vegetable, and then get huge satisfaction eating something I know I grew, and watch my husband enjoy it also.

Pawty

[Monika]

I have photo of my mother very pregnant with me, two years before the war, on my grandfather's allotment - but that doesn't count, does it?

My father always grew vegetables, in fact at times during the war and especially just after the war, that was the only thing we had to eat. Luckily, where we lived, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes etc grew outside in abundance, so I was always immersed in vegetable growing. and like others have already said, I too started seriously when I got married in 1957. And ever since then, we have had either a garden or allotment or both. I would miss it terribly if I could ever not grow my own, but know of course that age will catch up with me!

[WestHamRon]

My 3rd wife decided to grow potatoes, tomatoes and french beans in pots in our backyard.
Nuff said.

[Westi]

WestHamRon!

Still married to that girl no doubt?

Mine was was growing watermelons on the chicken pile way out in the outback in Aus! Love watermelon, moved to the big smoke & still plonked in watermelon seeds but extended my range of veg to compensate for the loss!

Westi

[Stephen]

I got the urge to do this whsn I moved from Clapham SW4 to Berkhamsted. At this point I gained a handkerchief sized garden and it went from there.
For me it was always going to be fruit and veg not flowers.
Subsequently, I gained an allotment; a half-plot, then the other half too.