My sympathies go out for your back problems, John, and I've seen two really nasty effects of the covids on chums, but you two you seem to have the lot, sadly!
On the growing front, when we used to have our allotments in the eighties, and more recently, when we returned twenty years later, we'd grow potatoes as part of the crop rotation and noticed that many of the old boys often grew even more! But that was then, and now, without an allotment at all, and just the patch at home, something has to give!
With - say - Maris Piper in Tesco at £1.59 for 2.5 kilos, isn't it time to forgo the spuds? We'll spend about £35 a year on them, which is about the same as buying the seed, the fertilizer, and of course, then there's the back-breaking work like preparing the trenches, planting the things, earthing up, then digging up the crop! I tried a few earlies last year, and it really wasn't worth the effort...
Yep - you lose that fabulous smell and texture of a new first earlies, but hang on, if you ache so much getting them in, then out, then in my book, forget them!
Another take on a raised bed, is 'Desk-Top' gardening, where I have a raised platform, waist height, and can grow carrots, springs, lettuce, beetroot, rocket etc, all in long trays filled with either all-compost, or a mixture with a little garden soil. Everything is still in use after sowing early in the summer, except for the lettuce baby leaves which bolted, but there's spinach to go in somewhere yet!
And all this is after we've packed the GH with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc! Even the runner beans are easy to pick when they're five ft up the strings, but it's admittedly a bit of 'low' work at the start...
I still get a huge thrill from all this, it almost seems like cheating, but it works for us two!
