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Obviously I want to grow the things I like to eat, and I don't want to try anything very difficult, or that takes 3 years to produce edible stuff!
Basically I would like to plant something that can yield a reasonable amount of veg from a small patch, and if it's not wildly optimistic I would be happy to divide my patch up and grow more than one thing at a time!
I would also like to be able to utilise it all year around, ie when one thing gets harvested, another gets planted.
The climate where I am is the South West of England, so it is one of the warmest parts of the UK and I have successfully managed to grow tomatoes and chillis in pots over the last few years.
I know there are some green-fingered people amongst you all so I await your suggestions with eagerness!
Being from Australia I don't know much about growing things in UK.
However, carrots are usually pretty easy and can be harvested partially when young and tender for baby carrots, while others can be left to grow into big carrots. Maybe onions and potatoes? Some herbs and things like spring onions might go well. Here, radishes are really easy, but I don't like them a lot. :) I did well with sweetcorn, beans and chilis, but don't know what they would be like there.
Cool climates can often do well with blueberries I believe, but they may take a while to get to the stage of fruiting. What about strawberries?
Seedlings usually go quicker than starting from seed, but you don't get as many for your money.
Also, whatever you plant, if you plant small sections at intervals of a week or so, that spreads out your harvest.
Look into companion planting too. Various plants have a beneficial effect on each other, and some deter pests. And some really don't do well planted near each other.
Anthea.
With potatoes you can build up a stack type system, using a heap, or old tyres stacked on top of each other are good. The potatoes then grow at different levels, and you can gradually remove tyres, or dig down your heap, and harvest level by level. This makes harvesting easy and also saves room.
A search online might find a description of how to do this in more detail.
Anthea.
i have always considered a fresh tomato from your own garden one of the highlights of life.
I have planted tomatoes, red bell peppers, cucumbers (lemon cucumbers), sugar snap peas, and a sunflower
We started a veggie patch this year, we are in the East of the UK. We found an excellent book titled 'The vegetable and herb expert' which is ideal for beginners.
For our first year we've gone for a plant loads and see what works approach. So we have peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes, strawberries, sweet corn, peas, runner beans and rhubarb. And ignoring our own advice new potatoes!
Everything is growing well, something is eating the bottom leaves on the runner beans, but they appear to be OK.
Lots of the things grow upwards, so they need support but not a lot of space.
Companion planting is a good idea, it uses plants to attract beneficial insects which eat the pests.
.... something is eating the bottom leaves on the runner beans ...
Put a few ounces of ordinary dish soap in a quart spray bottle and spray down the leaves, it won't kill the plants and it will stop most bugs. Washes off at harvest. :-) err . . . centiliters . . . liter . . . yeah . . .
My plot will be approx 10ft by 4ft and I am wondering what to try first.
This isn't much room, so it will probably be too small for my absolute favorite: corn. If you've ever pulled an ear from the stalk, shucked it, and dropped it right into boilng water, you'd know the difference between fresh and store-bought.
You need to put some radishes in. They're not everyone's favorite vegetable but if the rest of the garden tanks, radishes will always grow. :-)
If you go for tomatoes, please, ONLY ONE PLANT! :-) Unless you like canning, more than one plant will overrun you. A tomato plant in the corner will be nice, get a tubular trellis to suport it as it gets tall and heavy.
Spinach is great, it grows very quickly, and doesn't take up a lot of room. I usually get two or three rotations out of a season.
Broccoli is good too, they get rather large but you'll only need to keep two to four plants. As the florets bloom, you cut them off and they bloom more, providing meals over a period of 4-6 weeks.
Avoid most melons, you'll be able to fit only one or two plants in that space.
Onions don't take up a lot of room, but don't try them from seed. Get a small flat of starters. For big fat hot onions, keep the soil moist all day, every day. If you have problems with this, cover the surrounding soil with hay or grass clippings.
Grapes along the fence, these **will** take a few years to go to fruit but let them grow. Make sure you plant on the side so they don't shadow the morning or afternoon sun.
If you've ever pulled an ear from the stalk, shucked it, and dropped it right into boilng water
If you've never grilled corn... DO IT.
Keep the husk on the corn, and soak how ever many you want to cook/eat in a bucket of water for about an hour. Throw the corn on the grill (don't wrap them in anything, just keep the husk on). Cook until you get nice grill marks on all sides (usually about 15-20 minutes total), and remove from the grill.
Husk as you normally would, but BE CAREFUL... the inside is HOT. Eat. Perfect corn, every single time.
As for the garden, I've got a 14ft by 10ft plot with a small strawberry patch, 8 tomato (4 cherry and 4 roma), 6 onions, 4 garlic, 5 cucumber, 2 bell pepper, 2 hot pepper, 2 eggplant, and a bunch of basil.
I grew just about the same amount last year and had a plentiful bounty. Can't wait until the fall!
I do have some herbs and tomatoes growing in pots, and I plan to grow some lettuces in pots as well, and perhaps some chillis!
As for the vegetable bed itself, as Steve says, things like potatoes and carrots are pretty cheap here and take up a lot of room. I don't much like carrots anyway, so I'll discount those.
I think I'd like to go for courgettes and perhaps aubergines, as I like to eat them. Brocolli also sounds like a possibility, and perhaps peppers. I'm not sure about sweetcorn, but I'll consider it some more!
We found an excellent book titled 'The vegetable and herb expert' which is ideal for beginners.
Snap! I've got that book too - it looks pretty good :)
Apart from runner beans, what things grow upwards?
If you go for tomatoes, please, ONLY ONE PLANT!
If you go for tomatoes, please, ONLY ONE PLANT!
I have about 20 plants in the ground and maybe 4 vareties. I have space another 4 that I will plant this weekend. I stagger the plantings to extend the harvest.
I do give away a lot of tomatoes, few people say no.
If you have extra just give them to your local food bank. Or even plant an extra row for the food bank if you have lots of space.
1) Feed the Soil. With the bed size you are talking about you will want to get as much productivity as you can without depleting the soil. So, depending on your soil type and current condition, add lots of compost, rotted manure, blood & bone (hood & horn), seawead meal, seed meal, and so on.
How much to add? Well, a quick test is to see how many worms are in the soil. Dig a couple of spades of soil and have a look. No worms = heaps of organic matter required. Some worms = add lots of organic matter and top up continually, heaps of worms = top up continually to keep them happy. There are two basic types of worms:- burrowers (usually grey) and composters (usually red) and you need both. Burrowers open up the soil underground and so need depth to survive, while composters turn organic matter into humus and chelates and so need a thick layer of organic material on the surface to survive.
Whilst deciding what to put in you might want to grow a crop of green manure to build up root material in the soil. Just sow seeds of wheat, corn, rye, barley, beans, or anything else lying around, let it grow to about a foot high and then dig it in. This will increase the long terms moisture retention of the soil immensely.
2) Productivity - You will need to plan well to gain maximum productivity out of your bed. One option to consider is Square Foot Gardening [squarefootgardening.com] the concept of dividing your plot into one foot, or so, squares to assist in planning. One immediate benefit is you can easily see empty spaces waiting to be filled which is not so obvious with free-form planting. I use this in some of my beds and I find it a very useful tool indeed. It would also help in planning crop rotation [rhs.org.uk] if you want to go this route. Crop rotation may seem overkill with a single bed but it would certainly assist in maintaining long term productivity.
3) Planting choice - Again some good ideas in this thread. Not sure about some of the things that need space though, such as corn, courgettes, and the likes. Tomatoes also usually need a lot of space but there are a number of smaller varieties available these days and you can certainly get a good crop in a small space using these.
Were I in your position I would be focusing on four things when choosing plantings: productivity, longevity, variety and interest.
- Productivity, plants that will produce abundantly and continually in small spaces. Examples are Radish, Lettuce, Beets, etc. Depending on your water situation, Silverbeet (Swiss Chard) and Spinach would be good choices.
-Longevity, plants that easily self reproduce. For example, normal onions can take up quite some space and will need to be regrown each year from seed or seedlings. But what about trying Bunching Leeks or Walking Onions, varieties that reproduce from bulblettes or bulbils and will provide a continuous supply? The same with Chinese Artichokes, a small nutty tuber that readily grows small bulblettes.
- Variety, plants that are a little different. Carrots and Potatoes are relatively cheap these days, but what about non-standard varieties such as Red or White carrots, or perhaps Kipfler potatoes. Or Chinese Artichokes as mentioned above.
- Interest, something that just peaks you interest. Chinese Artichokes fell into that category for me, and I have heaps of other things I want to try such as New Zealand Yams, but they would take more space that you have. Hit the online catalogues and see what strikes your eye.
And what about your "regular" garden? You could sow some vegies in amongst your flower garden for both their visual appeal as well as their nutritional value. Rhubarb would supply interesting foliage and colourful stems in the flower bed and could easily be harvested for the odd Rhubarb Pie every now and then. Also Jerusalem Artichokes would provide sunflower like displays late summer and a good supply of tubers for consumption in Autumn. Pick a spot where you will always happy having them though as you will almost never be able to eradicate them if you change your mind. You could throw some strawberries along your flower bed borders. And there are heaps of other flowering plants that can be eaten. Arrowroot Cannas and Marigolds are but two examples.
Also, look towards companion planting for your normal garden. EG., planting Parsley and Garlic amongst your Roses provides kitchen flavourings whilst keeping pests at bay and reducing dependency on harmful chemicals. If you do some research on Companion Planting [attra.ncat.org] (or here [en.wikipedia.org]) you should be able to some up with quite a few examples of edible plants that would also benefit your flower garden.
Speaking of which, I have some planting to do. Gotta go. :)
Onya
Woz
[edited by: Woz at 2:14 am (utc) on June 16, 2007]
[edited by: JudgeJeffries at 5:13 pm (utc) on June 17, 2007]
Whilst deciding what to put in you might want to grow a crop of green manure to build up root material in the soil. Just sow seeds of wheat, corn, rye, barley, beans, or anything else lying around, let it grow to about a foot high and then dig it in. This will increase the long terms moisture retention of the soil immensely.
Would grass be included in this? The patch I am planning to convert is currently lawn.
Cheers for the other ideas, Woz. Plenty of food for thought here! (naff pun intended)
[edited by: encyclo at 2:06 am (utc) on June 19, 2007]
[edit reason] made link clickable [/edit]
Would grass be included in this?
Grass and hay actually rob the soil of nitrogen for the first part of their decay cycle. If you use grass, make sure it's sat in a compost pile for at least a few months.
Um, Yes, & No, Maybe. The idea of Green manure is to increase the content of roots, nitrogen and other nutrients in the soil. The root system of plants is an integral part of the soil structure assisting in aeration, moisture penetration whilst also providing organic matter when they break down. Roots are an often overlooked part of building up the soil, in fact, one Japanese professor has suggested that one should not remove any roots from the soil when weeding. (I have a link to his sire, but do you think I can find it!) And of course the green matter from the stems and leaves provide nitrogen and other compounds.
So in a broad sense your current lawn could help with the soil structure. However, as the intention is to turn the plot into a garden bed, I would be starting now to kill/remove the lawn grass and looking at how that material could be best used.
If you are going to build raised beds, an easy way would be to smother the grass with cardboard and newspaper and build your bed on top of that.
If you are going to build in-ground beds, then you could simply turn the sods upside down and let them rot whilst building the soil up on top of them. You might get a few grass plants poke their way up but you can simply weed them out if they show their noses.
Of course, this also depends on the type of grass you currently have in your lawn:- if it is all narrow leaf and non-invasive, then the above will be fine. However, if you have a large component of broad leaf, weeds that reproduce from root nodules, or grass that spreads (invades) via rhizomes, then you would want to take the time to sift out all the offending weeds and compost them.
In short, I would disrupt the growing cycle of the grass immediately and build the soil by using a controlled green manure.
>Grass and hay actually rob the soil of nitrogen for the first part of their decay cycle.
Yes and No. It depends on the grass's state of decay. Fresh grass/clippings are a GREEN (nitrogen) and so would boost nitrogen. However, being so nitrogen rich they also tend to clump and mat so would need to be spread thin. Hay is a mixture of GREEN and BROWN (carbon) whilst straw is a BROWN what would use some soil nitrogen whilst decomposing.
Green manure would be best dug in to break down in the soil. Do it before the plants produce seeds though to avoid unwanted plants.
It also depends on why you are using the grass/hay etc. If for the nutritional value then yes, composting first is by far the better option. But if using as a mulch for water retention in low-rainfall or drought areas, then the small loss of nitrogen is the lesser of two evils. Besides, a little Blood & Bone (Hoof & Horn) will quickly negate any nitrogen loss.
Onya
Woz
I have a gardening question. Each year, I fertilize with herring eggs on seaweed (Live in Alaska). This year, I fertilized with herring eggs only-and am having a very hard time getting anything to grow-almost like the soil is toxic!
Weeds won't even grow in it-any ideas?
Each year, I fertilize with herring eggs on seaweed (Live in Alaska). This year, I fertilized with herring eggs only-and am having a very hard time getting anything to grow-almost like the soil is toxic!
maybe too much salt?
funny - i use a liquid fertilizer called alaskan fish food or something like that.
looks and smells like you want to puke...
Possibly, though would the eggs alone-collected off the beach-have much more salt than collected on kelp/seaweed in the same place? I dunno. And it smelled/smells VERY bad when I turn the soil. More so than I remembered when I used eggs on kelp.
Is there a simple way to test soil that anyone here uses?
Even then, I would "process" the seaweed before using it by either:-
1) Placing it in a large tub/drum filled with twice as much water than seaweed and letting it rot for a few months, then diluting the liquid 10 to 1 and using as a liquid fertiliser.
OR
2) Letting it dry and shredding it before digging it into the soil.
OR
3) Composting it well with a mixture of green and dry seaweed along with other compost ingredients. I would Do a fast hot compost and the let it mature for at least six months to get to the black crumbly stage. Pure Gold.
akmac, your problem may be the salt, but then it may be just your soil. You could perhaps send some off for testing to ascertain the problem. Do "weeds" grow in un-seaweeded places of your garden?
Onya
Woz
My gardens in previous years sucked (inadequate soil) and I wasn't even going to plant anything this year until a friend suggested buckets. I'm now a bucket believer. In fact I think I'll do it again next year on an even larger scale.
You should look into getting a soil pH tester and check your readings. Do make sure it's the soil one, as there are specialized ones for soil, and ones for water.
Peas are the one thing I really remember - there's nothing quite like popping your own peas out of their pods.
If in doubt, get a small starter tray and put some potting soil in it, put the seeds in and keep it in the kitchen window. Keep it damp and watch for sprouts. When they poke their heads out, transplant, but catch them quick (as soon as they sprout) so they don't get sunburnt.
Germination can occur anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks, I've found carrots, for whatever reason, take up to three weeks to germinate. Bigger seeds, like melons, pop in just a few days (probably difference in moisture content.)
