I am in my mid 50’s and have been enjoying the benefits of growing my own fruit and veg for the past 5 years. It all started back in 2010, in january I had a cerebral hemorrhage (brain bleed). It knocked me for six, I lost the use of my left arm, left leg and I couldn’t talk properly. I went to the gym on a fitness program and over about six months I got the use of my body back again. The problem was (and still is ) I suffered from fatigue (and still do) which leads to depression. Thats a dark time that I have no wish to re visit so I’ll leave it there but the point is my eldest son read somewhere that gardening was good for stroke survivors so he built me a small plot in the garden that I could grow vegetables in.
Now I never knew the first thing about growing vegetables (which is ironic when all my working life I had been a greengrocer) so I started to do my research on what I could grow and how to look after it etc… The other thing I forgot to mention (no pun intended) is that as a result of my stroke I have terrible short term memory so I tried to find information that was short and to the point. This proved to be somewhat of a challenge, whilst full chapters about each subject are helpful and interesting, to some one like me they are almost impossible to remember. What I wanted was something short and sweet that would put me on the right path to successful veg growing. So I wasted a lot of time writing lists of how to do things (garnered from pages and pages of info).
In that first season I grew carrots, calabrese, lettuce, tomatoes, broad beans, runner beans, dwarf beans, radishes, courgettes, tomatoes (and weeds) in my five foot by three foot plot and also some potatoes in hessian grow sacks.
So the whole family benefitted from my organic, healthy veg and I benefitted both by eating the produce and also by realising that I was able to be productive even if it was in a different way than before.
Then when winter came I became a bit despondent as I didn’t understand about growing winter vegetables (how most need to be started off in spring/summer) so I waited for the next spring with baited breath, did more research and applied for an allotment from my local council.
What I couldn’t find was a website that was useful to me as a stroke survivor and a would be gardener so that’s what I’m going to try to create here so bear with me as it’s taken me months of planning to get this far. Also a lot of the content might seem basic to some of you but that’s my aim, an easy to understand site that will have you growing not groaning.
