Walled garden potager — Notting Hill Nomads

We wanted to be as self sufficient as possible during our time in France so we jumped at the opportunity to turn a section of the walled garden into a vegetable patch.

Resources were scarce during lockdown so we had to work with things we could make ourselves (such as stakes), things we found at the local dump (a pile of old CDs), and items sold in the gardening section at the local supermarket (this is how we ended up with bird net for fencing).

There were also a number of things that got lost in French to English translation like the time I bought a bag of what I thought was garden straw, but turned out to be a 20kg bag of organic hemp mulch! Considerably more expensive than I was expecting, but ultimately a happy surprise.

Self-sufficiency wasn’t all smooth sailing.

We made our own organic (hideously smelling) concoctions including nettle tea and garlic spray in an attempt to feed plants and deal with nibbling beasties organically.

Endless night patrols were conducted to tackle the incessant army of slugs who slid towards our seedlings after dark. We did try beer traps, however they didn’t attract any slugs and to be honest I thought it was a waste of good beer so I drank it.

Just as the slug onslaught began to abate everything was battered by storms and high winds.

Once the weather calmed down a gang of blackbirds found us and decided the best grubs lay under our crops, so spent their days dive bombing and digging everything up. Hence the addition of CDs (another great find at the local dump) and the scarecrow.

Eventually we found the most effective way to tackle the problem was to just sit in the garden with a bottle of wine and keep guard.

It wasn’t all bad and we did manage to emerge with some victorious achievements.

The not-so-victorious achievements were soon forgotten and put down to experience. Our pomme de terre were small but perfectly formed, the majority of our oignons were non-existent, and our carottes came out looking like the Beatles crossing Abbey Road but we were delighted.