Growing your own veg is well worth making time for, says Hannah Genders.
While working as a garden designer, overhauling people’s entire gardens, I am often asked: “How do you find time to do your own garden?”, and I have to say that I make the time to do my garden and especially to grow my own fruit and vegetables – it’s something I remain really passionate about.
If you have never grown your own food before, let me encourage you to have a go; it doesn’t require much space and means you can have a supply of fresh, organically-grown produce straight from the garden and at a much cheaper price than you’ll ever be able to buy it.
So the first question is: where to start? Decide on a plot in your garden that you could give over to some vegetables – it doesn’t need to be too big, but it does need some sunshine and shelter from strong winds.
Even though it means some hard work at the start, a system of raised beds constructed with wood and paths of either wood chippings or gravel in between is the best method.
This has several benefits; it cuts down on the workload in the long term, ensures the soil is not trampled whilst being worked and allows closer, more intensive planting than usual.
It’s very important to assess the type of soil you have before you start, so that your growing is a success. For example, a clay soil is often better for growing leeks, and in contrast a light, sandy soil will warm up quicker in the spring and is great for salad crops.
Clay soils are sticky to the touch and can be rolled into a small ball between the fingers whereas wet, sandy soils are gritty to the touch. Many soils are a mixture, but most will have a dominant content denoting the soil texture.
All soils need a good feed so adding organic matter like well-rotted compost as part of your preparation will pay dividends in the long term.
Some crops like potatoes, beans and courgettes grow well if planted directly into soil with fresh compost in it, while other crops prefer access to organic matter a year on.
This is one reason why crop rotation (where the same crop is moved around rather than planted in the same place) is such a good practice for success in your veg plot. It’s worth reading up on how crops rotate before you start.
Rule number one for me is to grow what you would like to eat, but to give you some easy things to try, here are some ideas.
For reliability and to break up a newly-cultivated soil you can’t beat potatoes. It’s late to be putting them in now, but if you can get some seed potatoes then have a go – plant them in rows about 30cm apart and about 10cm down in the soil, earthing the soil up to a mound over the top of the row.
It’s this ‘earthing up’ that needs to be ongoing; a technical term but it just means to scrape the soil up over the growing plants to avoid any light getting to the tubers, which makes them green and poisonous. Start digging them up to eat when they flower and the plant tops die down.
Salad crops are a must for anyone who buys those over-priced bags of salad in the supermarket. The seed can be bought as mixed salad leaves, sometimes called ‘cut and come again’.
Once you have hoed the soil surface to a fine tilth, spread the seed lightly in a row and sprinkle with a small amount of top soil.
If you repeat this in rows every three weeks you will have a continuous supply of fresh salad leaves all summer. And if space is a real issue, do the same in a pot and repeat the sowing in another pot every three weeks.
Sunflowers are also incredibly easy to grow and great to get children involved in planting – these easy-to-handle seeds, as the name suggests, just need a warm, sheltered position. Plant them a few centimetres into the soil and they may need staking as they get big, but they’ll look fabulous.
There are so many more plants I would love to suggest, but it really is about getting out there and having a go.
I read recently that this year the sales of vegetable seed are predicted to be higher than those of flower seeds for the first time since the Second World War, so this idea of growing some of your own produce looks to be catching on in a big way.
Long may it continue, I say.
Useful reading and information:
* The Vegetable Expert – Dr D.G Hessayon
* The Allotment Book – R. Bullock (good practical advice)
* www.gardenorganic.org.uk for online advice and help.