A year ago next month my family and I moved into our dream home in the pretty town of Ware. It has everything that we need and considered important from a new home - enough bedrooms for family and visiting guests, parking, decent sized garden and (two!) man-sheds complete with electricity and a fridge. Plus, the previous owners had built an area at the top of the garden to use as a vegetable patch.
Although they had never actually planted anything in the area, it was ready to use and had been constructed well from railway sleepers to drain enough water from the soil. It was also in a suitably sunny enough position for me to start thinking about what veggies I could actually start to grow.
Now, the irony here is that I'm a Shropshire Lad from a long line of farming types and successful market gardeners, growing up on farms with sheep and chickens, donkeys and ducks. So, you'd think that I'd have a good idea of what to do when it came to sowing my first crop. Wrong, as I'd never planted anything in my life before. Actually, I'm not even a great fan of most vegetables, either - so double whammy.
That said, the internet is an amazing place and the modern gardener's friend, so before long I'd got an idea of what to sow and set about digging in some fertiliser into the patch to help with proceedings. I have to say at this point that the help and advice from the chaps at Top Pots, based at Westmill Farm, was invaluable and their seeds/ plants and accessories good value, too.
My first crop was going to be easy enough - red and white onions, garlic, shallots, horseradish and potatoes. After the first two weeks of watering and wondering if anything was going to happen, sure enough the little fellas started to poke their heads out of the ground, to my enormous satisfaction. In fact, I became obsessed with the crop, watering every day, weeding, waiting for the time that I'd be able to harvest and sample some of my own produce, my first produce ever.
And, I didn't have to wait too long, in fact about 12 weeks to be exact. With the fantastic weather and my constant watering we had a bumper crop of potatoes, onions that exploded above the ground and the tastiest garlic and shallots. Horseradish? Well, you need to leave that a good season before you go anywhere near it (learning all the time).
The problem that I found myself in was that I had such a bumper crop that there was no way that I'd get through all my produce. Even after I'd given away to neighbours and stored for later use, I was brimming with the stuff. It was then that a friend told me about Hertford Food Swap, a bunch of grow-your-own enthusiasts who had started to meet each month in the Andrews room at Hertford Museum.
The idea is devilishly simple: you bring your own produce that you've cooked or grown to simply swap with other like-minded souls, also swap tips on growing, cooking and preserves and even advice on creating your own home-brew. The important thing here is that no money exchanges hands whatsoever. It's all about swapping your produce for theirs, in a medieval bartering kind of way.
The next meeting is on August 23rd from 10.30am -12pm, with the first 45 mins set aside for sampling and the swapping taking place after this period. It's advised to get down there early to get the best swaps, too!
So, if like me you've had a bumper crop of produce and you're looking for a way to make the most of your haul it's worth a visit to Andrews Room at Hertford Museum. I've already put aside a batch of potatoes and onions in the hope of snapping up some delicious home-brewed cider...
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