OUTDOORS: How’s the vegetable garden coming along?

The resurgence of interest in growing vegetables has gathered pace in 2009 with many people now tending a kitchen garden for the first time. I daresay, and I hope, many more are thinking of turning some soil in the future, but may be waiting until next spring to do so. If that is the case, mark out your beds now with cardboard, weighed down to keep it in place (manure or seaweed are top choices, but a couple of old tyres will do). This will rob the grass below of light, bring up the worms, and will make digging far easier when you lift the cardboard in early spring.
For those already growing, I imagine the now almost forgotten, dry warm and beautiful weather in June, caught some with their pants down, due to plants drying out. It is essential to keep emerging plants well watered – after only a few days of dry weather, the soil starts to shrink away from the roots (and root hairs) causing young plants to wither and die. Maintaining constant contact between soil and roots requires water and if there is a period without rain (it does happen, honest) you will need to replace a rain cloud with a hose pipe or a watering can.
It is better to water late on in the day, when the sun has gone low in the sky, taking care not to let the water run off along the surface. Up-turned plastic bottles with the bottoms cut off, shoved into the ground, can help direct the water to the roots – I use a cunning tactic involving a 3ft (90cm) length of yellow drainage pipe that’s full of holes, and shove the hose pipe into it, drenching the soil.
Once the plant is big and beefy, its roots go deeper, anchor more firmly and are able to search to find water for themselves more readily. They still need watching though, because if they think there’s none to drink, the plant will start putting energy into making seeds (bolting). This is to the detriment of leaf growth, and your rocket leaves, for example, will be small (but devilishly tasty).
Keep an eye open for those pesky slugs and snails. The best way to see if you have a problem with them is to go out an hour after nightfall, armed with rubber gloves and a jam jar of stale beer to drop any that you find into it; very satisfying!

Saving money?
To save money shouldn’t be the driving force behind growing your own. I still can buy carrots and peas cheaper than I can grow them for, but money, the dirty stuff, isn’t the main factor. If it was, you could sit back and eat ten for a quid Kiwi fruits and leave your fork in the shed. But, this kind of food relies on travelling great distances, could be well drenched in banned substances and wholly controlled by a vast multinational interest that has paid poorly for them; and this type of food may not be available for much longer.
Work out the obvious: Is it better practice to have the food we hope to eat growing near where we live – or is it better to rely on badly paid, badly treated distant workers to produce it for us and then transport it to us using lorries, planes, then more lorries, all organised by some large multi-gynormous from somewhere or other, that a few years ago we had never heard of and is driven purely by profits?
Unbelievably, we currently opt for the imported option. Try telling little Johnny the sense in this ten years from now, when oil becomes really scarce and expensive.
Grow your own food for the quality you can produce and because it's going to be essential sometime soon. Keep the faith.