It’s all about the veggies right now and to be honest, in days gone by as we dallied idly with the metropolitan elites, I never realised that the idea of growing vegetables would be quite so exciting. 

Don’t get me wrong, growing our own veg isn’t an entirely foreign concept. Way back in the last century, on another continent, my family had the luxury of sufficient space behind our home to host quite an extensive kitchen garden.

We also had a genial and hardworking gardener called Fungarai, who I now realise probably thought we were mad to devote so little of our one-acre plot to growing food, assigning the rest to lawns and flower beds that looked nice but consumed precious water and produced nothing edible.

Still, we grew beans, carrots, radishes, lettuces, tomatoes and squash, as well as having a couple of pawpaw trees, an orange tree and a grapefruit tree. The latter provided tempting targets for air rifle shooting – the pellets would remain secreted in the fruit until served to my father for breakfast, provoking his profound irritation when he champed down on them all unsuspecting.

Later, although still before the turn of the century, my student digs was owned and managed by a man with a PhD in development economics, who created an elaborate composting system in a series of trenches outside my bedroom window. When filled with a rich mix of kitchen waste, grass clippings, etc, the trench would be covered over with a layer of soil, and he’d plant veggies on top. I’m not sure where this research led, but the produce was delicious.

So, as promised yesterday, an update on what I hope will become our main source of greenstuff and rooty goodness at Corner Cottage – our veggie garden. This is all a bit of an experiment and as I mentioned at the outset of this chronicle, we are likely to screw up occasionally, despite every effort to get things right.

I assembled this modular affair yesterday.

Pretty straightforward for anyone with experience of the products of Airfix and the like – let alone the fiendish creations of IKEA. It was a small matter of aligning ten panels and rather tediously affixing 50 nuts to 50 bolts, levelling the chosen spot, and finalising assembly in place.

Then, following instructions from the internet, came a layer of sugar cane mulch, followed by potting soil, then fertiliser, then cow manure, then more potting soil. Feeling the excitement yet?

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This approach is called, I believe, the ‘lasagne’ method, which is pretty evocative really. It certainly puts the mind in the way of delicious meals – I had to stop to make a quick sandwich. All this physical labour makes a man peckish.

I also located a decent number of worms in a nearby flower bed and transplanted them in the hopes that they would multiply and confer the goodness of their excretions to the soil. Next on the agenda – start a worm farm — I’m told ordinary earthworms aren’t much good in this role.

Then, into the home strait with the judicious planting of radishes, carrots, beetroot, spinach, rocket and some herbs; a sprinkle of water and part one is done. It doesn’t quite resemble the picture in the catalogue yet, but it’s early days.

Where’s the excitement, you might reasonably ask? Well, I suppose it’s in the potential – the ingredients are all there, so given sufficient water and six hours’ sun a day, all being well the mysteries of nature’s processes will take over: complex organic chemistry, photosynthesis, subtle osmotic pressures and vigorous cell division will get to work in our service. It’s quite humbling – and we should have some home-grown nearly-organic vegetables before too long.

So when Andrew Marvell, way back in the 17th century, wrote to convince his girlfriend to carpe diem and get jiggy with him, he illustrated how if they had infinite time their love might ripen and gain richness by comparing it to some kind of marrow on the vine:

My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow . . .

And yes, there’s a not-so-subtle willy joke in there too. But of course, Marvell argues, as we are mortal and have little time, let’s not wait for love to mature at the rate of a pumpkin in its patch – to paraphrase a more contemporary bard, let’s get it on.

For a gentleman of my advanced years, the virtues of waiting are far clearer – it’s going to be fun tracking the progress of our tub of veggies as they make their way into the world. We’ll add another shortly too. Doing this as winter approaches is probably poor timing, but let’s see what transpires. If this crop fails, we’ll turn it under for the worms to eat and start again.