My first ever food garden, 6 months in the works

A little over a year ago I discovered I was really into gardening and this year I decided that this was how I wanted to spend any free time I had, I wanted to really commit myself to a proper project …

So for the last 6 months, anytime I’ve had a day off or even 20 mins here and there in between work I’ve been in the garden building my little paradise.

I was absolutely clueless this time last year and killed virtually anything I tried to grow, since then I’ve learned as much as I can using recourses online and I’ve put together a small scale food garden.

I’m focusing on self sufficiency for more unusual, commodity food items such as herbs and garlic rather than staple crops that you can get cheap in large quantities (like potatoes for example).

I’ve started with a lot of containers because I’m still very new to this and being able to move plants / manually control the water, humidity, shelter etc… has really helped me get to know what conditions each plant thrives in

So far I’m 100% self sufficient for:

Lettuce , garlic, nasturtium, six different types of mint, five different types of thyme, bay leaves, 4 types of basil, lavender, rosemary, 2 types of sage and oregano

By the end of next year I want to be producing at least 15-20% of the food I eat at home

With this project nature has also flourished in my garden. I set up dead hedges along the fence line with holes for little critters and we now have a hedgehog in our garden !!!

We have had baby birds nesting in our tree this year.

I’ve left most of the garden to wild and I’ve allowed it to turn into a wildflower meadow and with that I’ve managed to identify and catalogue 12 different species of bee.

Life is good