Food. We all need it and will die without it within 3 weeks or so. But what constitutes food? organic home grown veg or pasties from the local greasy puff pastry shop? We eat the odd rhetorically pasty but these days we are of the home grown organic fruit and veg variety although we could do with cutting down on meat a bit more.

So, having established we all need food you have decided that you want to grow, raise and or catch your own food. Why? Isn't there enough in the supermarkets for you to buy every week?

Actually if there were ever a major problem in this country the food supply would, it is estimated run out within 3 days. Not one bean on the shelves of our favourite supermarket within 3 days.

That is a frightening thought and can be backed up with hard facts but basically all of the big supermarkets are run on a “need it now” or “just in time” basis. This has come about because the tills are all computerised they can tell the managers what stock they have left at any given moment so when it gets to a pre determined level that product is re ordered. Take for instance milk. That is ordered certainly every day if not more than once a day where as say tofu might not be ordered even every week let alone every day.

If we have another fuel protest strike, major weather disruption or a major terrorist strike that paralyses the road network how will the food get delivered?

Other reasons for me to grow and rear my food are
1, I enjoy it
2, I know it's organic and free range ( Free range cabbages are a real must)
3, it's there when I want it
4, it's not subjected to 100's of food miles as they are known.

My fruit and veg have food metres not miles or kilometres.

Obviously at the moment I cannot grow all my own fruit and veg but after 1 year I was about 40% sufficient. After 2 years this rose up to 62% and we eat a lot of fruit and veg.

In general we have a cooked meal approximately 5 times a week and at each meal there is at least 5 different veg with sometimes 7 different veg. All of these are seasonal so no air miles bringing me green beans from Zambia when I can go into the back garden and pick enough veg for a meal for how ever many people are at our home.

In the first year of growing my own fruit and veg I just stuck in as many plants as I could in the available space to get as much produce out of the given soil area. I found out that this could be better planned for a number of reasons. Firstly weeding, I was on my hands and knees having to weed in between each plant, which is ok because once I was down I, was able to shuffle about but it would have been easier and faster if I had been able to use a hoe to weed. Secondly we had a massive wind and rainstorm one night and because all the onions were planted so close together the wind and rain pulled them all out of the ground. Consequently all had to be lifted and dried in the first week of July rather than the third week of August so the resulting crop was smaller onions.

In the second year I intended to plan the area a lot more precisely for the 2010 season and also do sucessional planting.

This is where you plant a few plants every few weeks to prolong the cropping season and not get a glut of produce in August. All year round Cauliflowers are an example of this although these are probably hybrid or F1 varieties you can essentially set a few seeds away today then in 7 days sew some more seeds then in 7 days after that sew some more and so on. After about 6 weeks the first of the cauliflower plants should be ready for planting out in the ground, weather and frost permitting and then every week after that you plant the next lot. When the first lot are ready to eat the second lot of seeds that you had sewn will, in theory be ready the week after and the next the week after that.

If you think that you are going to get a glut of caulis ready at the same time or close together then rather than sew new seeds every week do it every two weeks.

For next year, 2011 I will be reading a lot of notes taken over the last two years but also buying seeds that are non hybrid and in particular from

The Real Seed Catalogue.

I've bought from these good people before and have only had really good results.

On these pages you will often see me refer to notes and taking notes. Please, please, please get a small notebook or make one from scrap paper (see tutorial section) and take notes. I haven’t got a good memory but even so I didn't take notes and because of this I didn’t do the sucessional planting as well as I could have done.