Hands In The Dirt - Notes From a Vegetable Garden: From March 2025 (Extract)

A few early Spring entries from my 2025 gardening journal, Hands In The Dirt — Notes From a Vegetable Garden. Now available on Amazon.

Monday, 10th March 2025

My Garden Food Bank

I’ve had this self-sufficiency garden dream since watching the BBC comedy, The Good Life back in the 1970s. The idea of growing my own food, being self-sufficient, and saving money appealed. Now, I have a chance to do it.

Once summer arrives, the garden will be my own personal food bank. Here in England, with the cost of living rising, food inflation high, everything more expensive every year, there’s a simple pleasure in being able to grow some of my own food.

Seeing the price of fruit and vegetables in the supermarket makes me appreciate it even more. For the cost of a few pence in seeds, the garden will supply most of what I need for several months. And while it’s mostly vegetables that I grow, that’s still a big help.

Fruit, on the other hand, I find not so easy to grow. It often requires higher temperatures, and British summers aren’t always reliable. I’ve had some luck with strawberries, and I’m fortunate to live close to where wild blackberries grow. Very close, actually. At the bottom of my garden, a neighbour’s large blackberry bush spills over the fence, so all I need to do is pick.

Then there is a country park near where I live. Everywhere you look, there are blackberry bushes. For a couple of months in late summer, there are more than enough berries to go around. The best part is, they’re free.

It’s as simple as going for a walk and picking blackberries!

Tip of the Day: Use the garden (or part of it) to grow your own food and save money!

Tuesday, 11th March 2025

The Raised Beds

This year, I’ve been working on building three new raised beds in the garden. They’re fairly big (twelve by four feet, approximately), and I’ve been sketching out plans to split them, one half into a large section, and the other half into four smaller plots.

This plan might change, though, since some crops, like potatoes, will need more room. They do tend to need more space.

When it comes to the garden, I try to recycle where I can. The wood for the sides of the beds came from an old fence that was falling apart. It has seen better days, but the planks are perfect for giving the beds shape and structure.

Tip of the day: Don’t forget to rotate crops in the garden. Recycle wherever possible.

Thursday, 13th March 2025

No-Dig Gardening

Did You Know… Life in 1960s/70s Britain: From Tin Bins to Junk Shops and Rummage Sales - How Recycling Was Different From Today?

Long before official policies and colour-coded bins, we simply made do.

In 1960s and 70s Britain, when it came to collecting our rubbish, there were no separate kerb side collections. We didn’t have to remember whether this week was the green or brown bin. And there was no requirement to sort the rubbish we put out for collection.

At the time, it was not a big issue. There were no public campaigns urging us to reduce waste to protect the planet. It was not a mainstream political issue — the UK Green Party wasn’t formed until 1990 (out of the PEOPLE Party, 1972). Television did give us The Good Life, a BBC comedy following the alternative lifestyle of Tom and Barbara Good. Self-sufficiency and recycling in Surbiton. The idea of recycling though, was a fringe issue. 

But people often did it because they had to.

Dustbins

The rubbish (garbage) was collected once a week. Everything was put into a small tin bin (larger items would have to go to the local tip). All we had was a small round metal tin bin or two (later they were black plastic or rubberised bins). Household waste went into those bins, and it all went to landfill.

Of course, this was bad, but we were none the wiser. However, in many ways, we recycled far more than we realised, and not because it was policy. But because we had to. Milk came in bottles returned for deposit. Drink bottles were reused. Paper and wood were saved for lighting fires. Leftovers became the next day’s meal. And clothes would be used over and over again.

There were many examples of people recycling, reusing, and repurposing everyday items.

Make Do and Mend

The postwar generation who raised families had grown up at a time when waste was frowned upon. The war years had required people to “make do and mend.” It wasn’t just a slogan; it was a necessity, and for many it became a habit. With clothes, after a few years of wear and tear, they would be repaired, taken in or out, and passed down. 

This happened quite often with children’s clothes.

“When you have grown out of them, they will fit your brother.” Mam might say to me when she bought me a new pair of trousers, shirt, or jumper. She would save buttons in tins. And old jumpers were unravelled for wool. Shoes might be repaired rather than discarded, or worn until the holes in them became too big.

But my mother had one big advantage when it came to making do and mending. She was a trained sewing machinist. If it could be made, altered or renewed on a sewing machine, she could do it. No job was too big or too small. She could make clothes last a long time or turn them into something else.

But, more often than not, when something needed replacing, the first port of call was not an expensive shop in the city centre.

No, we would visit local junk shops.

The World of the Junk Shop

Every city and town had junk shops.

Near my home, a fifteen-minute walk away, there was a street of mostly junk shops, or second-hand shops, as some would call them. They were often dimly lit, dusty, and in need of cleaning, but nobody complained. They would pile things high and sell them cheap. We didn’t care about the “shopping experience”, as we wanted a bargain.

These shops were full of other people’s cast-offs. Crockery without matching sets, second-hand books, mismatched cutlery, old toys, electrical items, and furniture. Anything for the home, as long as it fit in the shop, could be found there.

Nothing was labelled “vintage” even if it was antique. There was no eBay to check to see if an item was worth something. The age of the collectible was yet to arrive. I’ve no doubt that those junk shops did house some items that probably had value, but people were mostly buying for need.

For many, whatever you wanted, you tried the junk shop before you bought new. It was cheaper, practical, and despite years of prior use, whatever you bought was often built to last, with years of use left. Today, we might call it upcycling. Back then, it was just shopping.

In our family, we would visit the junk shops on Saturday, which was a traditional day of the week for people to shop — a busy shopping day. There was no Sunday trading back then, no 24/7 opening time, either. No shop-to-you-drop online options. If you wanted to shop from the comfort of your own home, you did it with a catalogue.

For many, Saturday was the big shopping day of the week.

Rummage Sales and Charity Shops

Then we had rummage sales. Also known as jumble sales, a weekend would not be complete without checking the local paper to see if there was one listed nearby. Clothes were piled high on tables. Toys and books were sold for pennies. In fact, most things were sold for pennies. Rummage sales were often the cheapest of all.