How Does Your Garden Grow?

[Dapph2]

@Anguz - I thought about digging some of Dads Rhubarb up today - but we got plenty at home.

Dad's was some giant variety - Goliath or Victoria at a guess....? Who knows...? It would be donkeys years - decades old - older than me - it been dug up and the root rhizome split with spade and replanted many times.

We got smaller stuff in our garden - Timperly and Champagne.

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My Dad was an OK gardener - but he liked "something for nothing" - he was into "free low cost gardening" - perennial plants - saving seed and drying it for next year - letting beans go to seed and run again with them next year. Dad would cut about and replant veg that had "shot". My Dad was into growing Chard before it became into fashion - as it keeps growing and nothing eats it - then on second year - he would havest the seed and run again. Dad never failed with letting onions go to seed and replanting next years crop (I doubt my Dad knew what an onion set was..!) Dad liked his little alloy greenhouse - trays and trays of seedlings and cuttings early spring. Then tomato plants and cucumbers all summer.

Taking seeds from rhubarb once they have run to seed is the cheapest way to go . I was sending a teaspoon of Victoria Rhubarb seeds to anyone who asked for them . Everybody said all the seeds had germinated and produced great plants.
My original seed cost was something like £2,30 for a dozen seeds way back in 2006
I have been using home grown saved seed for the last 20 years :-
Runner beans , stringless climbing French beans , bush beans , broad beans , three types of peas , beetroot seeds , all sorts of herbs , plenty of crucifiers , All manner of onions & garlics , tomatoes , strawberries seeds , various cucumbers and marrows , Celery , lettuce ,brassica's & seed from long fly resistant carrots .

And almost all flower seeds from the gardens after my initial £110 or so outlay in 2006 .for both flower & veg seeds .

Dahlia were difficult seeds to collect as normally it's so wet here you wonder if the seed head has rotted and won't be viable ,.but with some perseverance I got over 100 seeds that germinated .

This last years I've not been able to do a thing in the 250 square foot beds due to the disabilities I have and recovering from a major shoulder repair operation . Plus my new mancupoards have had to take precedence over gardening as I am using the walls of the beds to hold the platforms of Alison's Bonsai etc. etc, till the concrete slabs are cast ( almost there ) & the two new sheds are erected .