We have had some amazing stories of our team growing their own vegetables over lock-down and we wanted to share these with you. For some this is a first time experience and they’re so proud with the results. We hope this may inspire you to grow your own at home too, whether it’s vegetables or a looking after a plant, try out your greenfingers and see what you can achieve.
Sarah
“I wouldn’t class myself as a gardener, probably due to lack of time and knowledge more than any other reason. I’ve never done much more than buying bedding plants and a ready-made hanging basket. Covid 19 has certainly changed that!
Back in March, just as lockdown was looming, I went on a panic buying shopping trip. Not for toilet roll and hand soap, but for boredom busting children’s activities. Seed planting was an activity suggested by one of my colleagues and without giving it much thought I purchased a few bags of seeds, some seedling trays and compost from work.
A few weeks later the children enjoyed planting their seeds, it was a fun afternoon activity. We had tomatoes, runner beans, carrots and lettuce. Every few days they sprayed them with water until they excitedly came to tell me that the seeds had started growing. Amazingly they kept on growing and as they grew so did my interest. The pressure I felt to keep these little plants alive was quite something.
Once they had outgrown the small trays we separated them into their own pots, I really didn’t know what I was doing so I did check in with the Perrywood experts a few times! We had so many growing that many windowsills throughout the house were full of baby seedlings, at one point there were over 40 pots. I ended up using the drawers out of our old freezer to store them in as it made it easier to carry them in from the garden at night time!
Nearly 4 months on and we are enjoying the fruits of our labour. I have also been able to give a few tomato plants to some of our friends. We ended up buying a Veg Trug for our carrots and lettuce, have added in sweetcorn and now own a pop up greenhouse.
I absolutely love being in my garden now. I am so proud of what we have grown that I am often sending my friends little updates on my plants, so much so that they now call me ‘Garden Geek’. It’s lovely to see my children develop a passion for gardening too, they have said that our runner beans are the best they have ever tasted!”
Tora & Josh
“We wanted a project to do so we decided we wanted to sort out the front of the house and we turned it in to a vegetable patch. This cost pretty much nothing apart from some grass seed and some horse manure. We then collected all the logs from the woods behind us and cut to size. We now have sweetcorn, tomatoes, leeks and a squash growing.”
Cerys & Jamie
“Me and Jamie are growing melons this year. Who says you can’t grow stuff in rented houses?! We’ve got four cantaloupe F1 Irina melons growing from a big plastic pot that’s also filled with bedding plants. It very exciting! We’ve just put hammocks on them using old tights so they don’t fall off before they ripen.”
