Greetings all!

[Stonehead]

Anyway: Aberdeenshire seems to be getting incredibly popular with potential smallholders. Growing season is a bit short; if you want to be anywhere near self sufficiency in veg (and don't want to eat just neeps all year round ), you'd definitely need a greenhouse or polytunnel. Some areas are a bit exposed to wind as well, that restricts what you can grow, too.

I beg to differ! We don't have a greenhouse or polytunnel, are exposed to strong to storm force winds much of the time (currently blowing a gale despite the blue skies), and are just high enough to get oodles of snow and very hard frosts.

Despite that, we are almost entirely self-sufficient in vegetables. Granted, it does take a bit of work, a willingness to accept losses and being very much in tune with nature, but it is doable. (The long summer days do make up for the shorter growing season, too.)

One thing that does gives us a slight edge is the sun porch the previous owners added to the house. We can start the more tender plants in there, but as its full-time summer use is our one exotic - tomatoes - everything else has to go outside.

Having said all that, we do eat a lot of tatties and neaps...

Stonehead

PS And hi to Mandy![/i]

[shiney]

Hi Mandy,

I think I may have missed Stonehead too, so welcome both of you!

[ina]

Having said all that, we do eat a lot of tatties and neaps...

You are obviously very much acclimatised already...

Ok, you can survive without poytunnel or the like, but it helps a lot. I'm out of all space just for starting off seedlings on the window sills, no idea what I'll do when they all need potting up, because it's still to cold outside to plant them out! And as you say, tomatoes - I had a lot of green tomatoes one year. Had green tomato chutney for years afterwards.

[Stonehead]

Having said all that, we do eat a lot of tatties and neaps...

You are obviously very much acclimatised already...

Definitely - our other staple is oats and I start most days with bucketloads of porridge! (Mind you my Grandma was from Dumfries and Galloway, while much of my Grandad's family were crofters from various parts of Mull, plus Dunoon and Nairn.

I'm out of all space just for starting off seedlings on the window sills, no idea what I'll do when they all need potting up, because it's still to cold outside to plant them out! And as you say, tomatoes - I had a lot of green tomatoes one year. Had green tomato chutney for years afterwards.

Do you have cold frames or, better yet, hot frames? Old glass doors and window frames are excellent for this. We start our seeds in the sunporch around now, harden them off under cold frames in about two weeks time and then move them out under fleece after that. Last year, the last hard frost was in late May, so I'm working on the same basis this year.

Stonehead

PS And unless you're lucky enough to find toughened glass for your cold frames, expect hail!

[ina]

I've had the windows for the cold and hot frames (one of each planned) sitting in the garage doing nothing for the past 3 months or so...