It's not seedy, it's sustainable

There's a new badge on my blog. It says I'm a Seedy Pen Pal. That's a tad harsh, to be honest. I may, on occasion, border on risque, but seedy? Nah.

Naturally that's not what it means. It's part of a new scheme based on Foodie Pen Pals set up in the UK by my clever sister Rock Salt - more of that in a later post. Seedy Pen Pals is designed to bring together gardeners of all abilities who want to swap, well, seeds.

In a (rather truncated) nutshell, it works like this: you get paired up with a fellow gardening enthusiast. Fellow enthusiast gets paired up with another, and so on. So it's not a swap, the people you're sending to will be sending to someone else. Do you see? You then send a parcel of seeds off to your penpal, along with any tips / instructions / educated guesses about how to sow and grow, and you get a parcel from someone else in return! You can find out more by clicking on the badge over there --->.

This has all come about as a result of a decision on my part to take over the care of the communal garden I share with my tenement neighbours. It was kept tidy by our factor, but nothing more. And by 'kept tidy' I mean 'attacked with a strimmer once or twice a year'. So I've been getting in there with spade, fork, hoe, shears, loppers, secateurs and saw, and attempting to create something with a little more wow.

It's very early days, but you can see my efforts so far (if you want to) here. There are some nice flowers and I've had a go at some veg - peas, carrots, potatoes and tomatoes are going well; cucumbers, gherkins and radishes are coming along nicely; beetroot I'm not sure about and I'm afraid the turnips just didn't work at all. So I thought joining something like Seedy Pen Pals might provide some helpful tips on growing veg in a garden where there isn't a lot of sun. Not because of the crappy summer we're having, just because the building gets in the way.

First match up will be on August 5th; I shall let you know how it goes!