Let me introduce myself and Gardening for Goodness

I'm a keen amateur gardener who moved from Scotland to rural Northants in 2016 and began to develop a small garden into something more, including buying a neighbouring veg patch which often elicits a response along the lines of, "Crikey - you've bought a farm!" It's really not, though I could probably supply a supermarket with giant thistles if thistles were a crop.

I'm a veg gardener, not a flower gardener, though all gardens need flowers, and mine has some, just no yellow ones, though I make an exception for primroses. I most favour edible flowers (which is partly why prims are allowed in.)

I'm also time-poor. I earn a living as an author, which involves deadlines and long hours but also for me a lot of travelling around the world, because of the topics I write about. For the last ten years the workload has been increasing, so a valid question is: how do I have time for a big garden and producing veg? My answer is that I love it and find it incredibly beneficial for physical and mental health (which happens to be my main topic when I write non-fiction, so I'm practising what I preach...). I don't do a few time-consuming things that many other people do: watch TV; have any children at home or even a husband at home during the week; play golf or watch sport; socialise during the day; and I don't have a dog any more. I work in a garden office, so lunch and coffee breaks can be spent weeding or picking or staking or watering.

Another reason I love veg growing is that I'm a keen cook. Many, many years ago I did it for a

living, before I accidentally became a teacher and then eventually the writer I actually wanted to be.

Our village gardening group
Earlier this year, I set up a gardening group in our village. This began as a simple What's App group through which people could share/ swap/ give away spare seedlings or plants.

And it grew, as anything to do with gardening should.

We've had two meetings and this is the gist of what we're doing so far:

• We will continue to share seedlings and plants 
• Some people might also share or sell spare produce, though it looks as though this will fall into two categories: A) people who have a glut of apples, damsons or courgettes and B) people (eg me) who have a lot of a lot of things, including those that are very time-consuming to nurture. There's a discussion going on about selling versus giving and I'll discuss that another time.
• I've signed us up to the Suttons Seeds group scheme, so we get a big discount on seeds and a small one on everything else
• We are going to share compost deliveries from a company that uses biodegradable packaging and peat-free compost
• We have plans to beautify our already lovely village by doing things like sowing wild flowers and planting more bulbs
• We plan to raise money for the village with an Open Gardens day in 2020 or 2021
• We plan events with speakers - first one is a rose expert (you can eat rose petals, so I'll go...)
• And we will share tips and advice when it occurs

I will share some of that on this blog. If anyone in my gardening group (you know who you are!) wants to offer tips or a story, especially a story about how you beat insects organically, let me know.  

Why Gardening for Goodness?

Because gardening is. Well, for me it is. Isn't it for you? The goodness of producing something visually beautiful; the goodness of health and happiness; of superb tastiness. The wonderful feeling of walking through a garden at the end of a hard day's desking, quietly picking peas and eating them straight from the pod; of digging gently into the earth and finding the nestling pink treasure of fir apple potatoes; of standing in a greenhouse inhaling tomato scent and picking so many that you know you'll be roasting them for soup, and pasta sauce and ketchup and just to eat on toast with the best olive oil and scattered with home-grown basil leaves as big as wooden spoons. Peeling back some brassica leaves and finding a creamy white cauliflower. (And actually screaming.) I could go on. But all of it is goodness. Goodness in spades.

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Note: I've had blogs before - one even became a book - so I know how time-consuming they are when done properly. I'm not doing it properly! I won't be blogging often enough (except at first just to get some material down) and I don't mind if people do or don't leave comments. I don't mind if you sign up to follow the blog or not - though getting posts by email means you won't have to waste your valuable time coming to see if I've written anything. For once I'm just writing because I want to, not because I have a deadline and a contract. I have nothing to sell and no desire or need to promote a book. Absolute hooray!

On the other hand, surely you'll want to hang around to see my wonky (one word for it) veg... Can you wait for the carrots that think they are boots, strawberries and mermaids? Or the heritage tomatoes that need a PG rating?