Spring is in the air – or at least it was at the weekend. It’s decidedly greyer here today, which makes me all the happier that we started Operation Garden on Saturday. You see we bought this house last April but with all the painting, setting up bills and terror of finally leaving home, we just didn’t get round to doing anything outside!

Well that’s about to change and Operation Garden is our way of making the space somewhere that we want to spend time relaxing in the glorious British summer months (ahem). But more than that we want it to be a useful space. Somewhere we can grow things to support ourselves – and that means VEGGIES. So with the sun shining down on us we set about digging borders, planting dinky seeds and building a 6ft vegetable trough! Lots of piccies of the build  taken on my phone (better photos next week, I promise!) are below.

Our ultimate aim here, and the challenge we have set ourselves, is to see if what we get out of the trough in year 1 can cover what it cost us to make it:

Material Cost: £60.39
Compost Cost: £24

That means that we need to produce vegetables that would have cost us £84.39 to purchase in the supermarket. In short, I am a realist and I don’t think it’s going to be possible to get this kind of return in year one as it equates to approximately 42 bags of spinach . I love spinach as much as the next girl but this seems a little optimistic at the minute!

Either way, we’re going to give it a bloody good go!

I’ll keep you updated with a running total throughout the year as well as some of the other lovelies we have started growing (including 6 types of chilli!)

And here it is… in all its glory!

From left to right we have sowed:

• 2 x rows of lettuce
• 2 x rows of radishes
• 2 x rows of carrots
• 2 x rows of onions,
• 1 x row perpetual spinach

And here’s the build step-by-step!

Wish me luck!