I’ve been growing with Rocket Gardens for almost ten years now, so it feels like the right time to let someone else take over the veg garden diary. I remember when I first started out how much I was learning as I went, and that felt really valuable as readers could learn with me. I have a lot more gardening knowledge in me nowadays, and I’m aware that I can take some of that knowledge for granted, assuming that readers share a basic understanding of flea beetles or aphids and so on. It means that sometimes I’m not sharing as much as I could about my veg growing and I don’t want to leave readers feeling shortchanged. I have a sneaky suspicion that Tiny Gardener will get deeper into some of the nitty-gritty of learning how to grow veg and that that will really help those readers that are a little newer to gardening. I’m also quite excited to see what she can cram into her dinky veg plot – mine is pretty big, so I’ve never had to worry about space! I’ve also volunteered to be on hand to help her with some gardening advice, so you might see some joint articles or Q&As with the two of us over the coming months.
In the meantime, I’m going to be putting a little more time into garden recipe development, which is something I’ve been doing with my sister (who you might recognise from some of Rocket Gardens video tutorials on YouTube) who is a gardener and has lots of years of experience growing for a market garden and selling to hotels and restaurants. That’s her foot in the photo, cooking irresponsibly barefooted over a wheelbarrow full of hot coals… she and I were hosting a campfire feast night for friends.
We’ve been surprised actually at how popular the recipes have been over the past couple of years, with people asking us for a cook book (maybe soon we will produce one….!) and saving the recipes from instagram. I guess people just want easy ways of cooking their homegrown veg, and that’s what my sister does really well – she’s an absolute master of seasoning and spices, and she’s vegetarian too so has a real focus on cooking plant-based dishes. I tend more towards traditional cooking – lots of roasts, stews and soups – and the two of us make a really good team, meeting somewhere in the middle when we’re working on a new recipe. Also, she doesn’t have a smart phone and she’s really good at clearing up the kitchen as she goes, whereas I do have a smart phone and I’m a super messy cook. It’s an excellent reason for me to busy myself taking photos of all the food while she does the washing up.
Here’s to a new season for me, for the Rocket Gardens blog, and for Tiny Gardener (I keep getting Elton John’s Tiny Dancer tune in my head when I write that!) and hoping that you all get lots of enjoyment from our articles over the next few months!