So, I have a decent sized garden. However, I have not much gardening experience. I'm hoping to optimize on space as much as I can to grow my own veg for myself and my family, but I'm not sure. My first big decision is how much space to allot myself. The garden itself is big enough to allow 4 beds, each 15'x5' but it'll leave no room for a lawn or anything similar. However, cutting out just one of those beds leaves me with enough lawn to at least say I have one. It's not much, but it's enough for some wildflower seeds and a picnic blanket, and since I have a little one, I'd like him to be able to enjoy the garden too. What do you think? 3 beds or 4? Secondly, there's the question of the front of the garden. See, we have a driveway, which is all paved over but very rarely used. The easiest option is to just cover it with plant pots and such, but I was wondering if there was any other way. Also, we have some soil in a border at the front of the house, and were thinking of something climbing up the walls at the front; something edible, but not necessarily attractive. For instance, if we grow tomatoes out there, everyone'll be grabbing them. Beans and peas are already being grown in abundance out the back, so there's no need for more of them here, so I was thinking of treating myself. Courgettes maybe, or melons of some kind. Maybe eggplant. Or a combination of several things. The front of the house is south-west facing, so it's not bad as far as sunlight goes, and gets lots of intense sun and heat from lunchtime onwards. What would be suitable there? The other thing I'm thinking hard about is potatoes. I think I want to grow salads, first earlies and earlies in grow bags, and either a water-butt or plastic bin for maincrops, or grow the maincrops in the garden itself. The problem is, we had potato blight last year, and didn't catch it as early as we would have liked (I only spotted it when we started digging up slime-filled potato skins; in time to save about 1/3 of the crop) so I imagine the garden on whole is off limits. But if we have them in a water-butt out the front, well away from the infested area, that should solve the problem, no? I'm also relying heavily on double-cropping, lots of plants that can be picked young, over-winter varieties, etc. Anyone else who does a lot of this? Oh, and I'd so love to be able to grow something, anything, up against the north facing wall. I'm getting a morello cherry tree for planting against the north-facing end of the lawn (another reason to keep a bit of lawn back) but the only other fruit like thing I can find that tolerates that much shade is rhubarb, which I'm happy to grow, but don't they take ages? Whew, that was long! Thanks gang His_Einna
Hello! What a nice, long entry. I can't answer your questions bar the first one. By all means, make a little patch of lawn for your little one. Can you get hold of some rhubarb from somebody that will need theirs divided? We got a couple of roots from our neighbour in spring and could harvest the first summer. Potatoes can be grown in water troughs or buckets, so if you use your drive way for that you'll have no problem with the potato blight I guess. There are lots of veggie growers on this forum, and I'm positive you'll get loads of info from them once they wake up.
Awesome. I think I am gonna leave some for the little one, and may have a couple of water butts out front and a few grow bags out back for potatoes (main in the butts, earlies and salad in the bags).
Sounds like you have big plans. :-D I think you would need to start by deciding which veggies you want to grow. Research info on how many pounds of produce you are likely to get from each plant to determine how many of each to grow. How much can your family eat, preserve for the winter or give away to family and friends. I have heard that one Zuchinni plant can make your neighbors hide behind closed curtains everytime they see you coming up the walk by the end of the growing season. When you settle on which veggies and which varities of those veggies, you need to make notes on how much space they require for healthy growing and crop production. If your growing season is long enough there are many veggies you can plant to get a second crop from before frost. Some you can plant every 3-4 weeks to have successive harvests all thru the growing season. Also, there are some plants whose leaves can be somewhat poisonous if eaten raw, so with a little one you will need to research that and plant them well away from his play area or put fencing around them if he wanders away when you aren't looking he can't get to them. Can't help you with what veggies to grow in your sun and heat....your intense heat is way different from the intense heat we get in summer here in Texas. Growing potatoes in large containers, even large black plastic trash bags, is supposed to be a very easy way to grow them and makes harvesting much easier to do. I plan on giving it a try this year. Good luck with your garden and don't forget to take before, during and after photos to share with us.
A before shot now would be fun; All you'd see is snow! I was wondering actually about the poisonous thing...isn't raw rhubarb poisonous? My nan used to have a way to solve that one though when I was little; she used to grow a small patch of stinging nettles around the bad stuff, lol. Certainly kept me away!
