Let the vegetables begin!

Main vegetable patch (misc bed and pea/bean bed), July 2016

It's time to stop buying veg from the store.  We will still be buying fruit.  And while it  may sound like exploiting loopholes, we are allowed to buy all kinds of fruit, and that includes things like peppers, cucumbers, avocados, etc. 

It is my goal to stop buying vegetables for a full year, starting now.  To be honest, this has been my goal for many years now and I've never achieved it.  We usually begin buying again around mid-November, though we generally still have a bit of frozen garden veg now and again until maybe January.  It may happen again this year exactly the same.  Maybe I can push it back so that we start buying in January, with odds and ends until March? 

As far as winter veg goes, I'm still sowing (kale, rutabaga, pak choi, chicory) and growing (cabbage, sprouting broccoli, leeks).  I've got some growing for storage:  onions, garlic, peas, runner beans.  I've got seeds for winter salad leaves:  lettuce, miner's lettuce, corn salad.

I keep trying to grow root crops, a winter staple, but the slugs and bugs seem to seek them out over everything else;  I only have a few beets and celeriac growing, from several sowings.  I have some carrots in a few planters, but they won't be for winter use:  they don't get big enough or plentiful enough for storage--but it's better than the beet situation.  I'll be lucky if I get ten beets this autumn.  And one celeriac...

But enough of my misgivings.  Let the vegetables begin!