Planting Plans For One Person

Karmacat

Thanks SC! Thing is .... that bit you've crossed out - what do *you* do? How high are my chances of success with the bung way of being - of course, thats how I cook, so it could be good....

RAS

ceridwen wrote: »

I could do with planting plans for Square Foot Gardening Beds (ie 4' x 4') for just one person. I have two of these readymade Square Foot Gardening Beds - one of which unfortunately is in shade and the other basically has sunshine.

So your shady one can grow summer salads and spinach from spring to autumn, peas and late broad beans in the summer.

Your sunny one is for onions, early peas, beansonce the frost are passed, winter salads and oriental greens, and endivy things planted after your harvest the onions, peas and beans.

ceridwen wrote: »

I have loads of a couple of things, nowt much of others and nothing at all of other things I would like - so thats not exactly good planning on my part .

So what do you have too much/too little of?

ceridwen wrote: »

I have 3 of those potato growbag thingies for spuds as a separate thing. .

What I have done with these is to work my hand down the side of the thingie and extract the largest potatoes early on, water, then leave the plant to keep growing more tats, without major disturbance. Prolongs the harvest period.

ceridwen wrote: »

Also - I have the problem of literally nowhere to store any surpluses - so the food production has to be pretty constant. There is only a tiny bit of freezer space available and no cold cellars, conservatory, etc in this house.

Grow things that you can harvest by the leaf like spinach, Swiss chard, leaf lettuces, oriental greens.

If I grow hearted lettuce, I still pick a few leaves at a time off the plant until it is about to bolt, when I cut the heart, leaving 8-16 outside leaves. From each leaf node, a sideshoot develops, which means that three weeks later I have more lettuce to harvest. Sometimes, I can clear that harvest and get a third lot off the same plant. This means I am picking for about 12 weeks off one plant, rather than cutting the plant to the floor and having to eat the whole thing in a day or so.

And grow small quantities - three runner bean plants is quite enough for one person, with 4-6 climbing french beans. Ditto things like beetroot - you may want to plant 8 clusters and 2 leaf lettuce in one square for instance.

Identify crops that keep well too.

Courgettes will stay usable for up to three weeks if kept dry and cool (out of the sun).

Beetroot will keep in the ground, as will carrots, leeks and parsnips, and the winter hardy leaves like Swiss chard, Gaint red Wave mustard, mizuma, corn salad, rocket, landcress, welsh onions, salad burnet and all the brassicas. Most will bolt merrily in the spring but you can harvest the sprouting shoots of any mustards and brassicas and use like purple sprouting.

Root vegatables can be kept in sand if the weather is really poor, in a box under the units (replace the kick board).

Larumbelle

Karmacat, I do propogate some of my seeds in a home-made greenhouse before potting them on, but not always, and I do make sure I've planted them in a nice mix of compost (HM if possible, though wasn't this year because bumblebees took up residence in my compost bin and I didn't want to disturb them), and vermiculite (hydroponics stores sell it cheaper than garden centres).

I feed them with tomato feed and do occasionally talk to them as well as looking out for signs of anything that might be going wrong, but yeah, really I just bung it in the ground and hope for the best! And it usually works fine, so...

doesn't make me sound much like a gardener, though, does it?! TBH that's what I love most about gardening. That little seed becomes a big tasty plant of some kind, and all it needs is some water and light and warmth, a little nutrition, and a little love. Every plant is a miracle when you look at it like that.

ceridwen

Awww...shucks...Silver Charming.....I rather liked your blog at the "Lazy Faire - Silver Charming does Green" incarnation. Wouldnt mind seeing that version back again and with further entries in that vein - and you could always do sidebar thingies for your campaign (err...think it might just be possible to hazard a guess at who is doing the sabotage!:rolleyes: )

mardatha

I'm following this with interest. I have a back garden with a plot marked for veg next spring. I can't dig, neither can OH, but a son is going to do it for us.
I don't cook anything fancy and dont like veg much LOL - but this is to eat healthy/save money , and I make a lot of soup.
I was discussing with Ceridwen the pros & cons of buying containers but the son said no, he would dig it and clear it...so the next thing is when to plant what. I want enough potatoes to keep the 2 of us all or most of the year; I like onions ;I use a lot of carrots in soup. That plus some nice lettuce & tomatoes should do it.
I grew loads of tomatoes inside last summer , they were amazing. I want to try the russian or artic varieties this year as they are said to be suitable for up here. Think I will just keep them inside as its high and windy here and anythign fancy just gets blown over. I gave up on Hollyhocks many years ago !
I would welcome advice (on anything LOL) esp on how to make cold frames/plastic tents/anything that will keep the cold wind off my baby plants next spring. I'm 1000ft up and my garden is a month behind the town half an hour away. Frost from end Sept till 1st June. I wanted to buy things, raised beds/frames/cloches...but then realized that we have NO MONEY !
Soooo, anybody who likes a challenge please think out loud to me !

RAS

mardatha

Any chance of getting forestry/woodyard trimmings near you?

There was an excellent series of articles in Organic Gardening earlier this year by a chap who made raised beds surrounded by off-cuts, a frame, shed, "greenhouse" all from rough timber with bark still attached, got for virtually nothing.

Karmacat

Hi Mardatha
Cloches for small plants could be made from big plastic bottles cut in half-don't know how you'd keep them from blowing away tho, maybe pierce them with a long twig and pin them to the ground .... a raised bed can be made of old timber, roughly nailed together .... fleece to keep the frosts off, hmmm..... bubble wrap? And take it off once its fully light?

I'm trying to muck about with Sun Bingo at the mo via ipoints, so if I think of anything else, I'll post again.

Larumbelle

mardatha wrote: »

Soooo, anybody who likes a challenge please think out loud to me !

Challenge accepted

I don't have a lot of money either, and I've found making do pretty easy so far. I made my 'greenhouse' from a huge plastic bag scrounged from a local manufacturing company, and put it over an old gazebo frame (freecycle perhaps?), it's okay for spring-through-autumn use, and seems to have stood up to the wind down here fine, though it's not as constant as yours! Old wendy house frames or old PVC piping could make the frame as well. If you struggle for a huge bag I might be able to scrounge another and post it - the manager I got mine from was so pleased with the homegrown strawberries I gave him he told me to let him know if there was anything else he could help me with Cloches can be the top half of old pop bottles with the lid left off when the seedlings are tiny, when they get a bit bigger I just make a 'tent' by sticking sticks or canes in the ground and draping some plastic over, then securing with stones. If I need netting, I do the same thing but with an old net curtain. It doesn't look massively pretty but it does the job! If it's windy where you are you probably just need heavier stones :rotfl:

I made my raised beds with offcuts from a scaffolding firm. They can't use them if there's any notches or cuts in them and were happy to give them to me and even delivered them! I used old hinges to fix them together cos I'm no good at DIY. It's actually worked as an advantage because they fold flat when I'm not using them.

Potatoes I grow in an old dustbin, gradually filling it as the plants grow. When you tip it after the plants have died down the whole dustbin is full of tatties!

Containers for smaller items can be pretty much anything! I use old flower buckets from Morrisons (8 for 99p) for a lot of things, but I'll grow stuff in pretty much anything that holds compost! Strawberries and tomatoes in hanging baskets, lettuces and spring onions just go in seed trays. Just use your imagination... I've even planted a couple of strawberry plants in a pair of old wellies, and they look fabulous!

Carrots and onions are good to grow together, as the onions stop the carrot fly and carrots stop the onion fly. Both store pretty easily as well, onions can be strung up, carrots stored in sand (or make and freeze the soup!) You can get varieties of carrot that are more resistant to cold and frost than others, look for the 'autumn' varieties, although if you plant carrots in June you should get your crop before the autumn frosts.

More coming soon...

Karmacat

Wow! silvercharming! I know one bit I remembered tho - using old drawers (i.e. from chests of drawers). I have one set that has a beautiful top but the body, and even the drawers themselves, are horrible, I'd be happy to use that to grow stuff in and have them slowly disintegrate over a few years.

mardatha

brilliant ta. How deep do carrots go ? I have one son who is a joiner but he doesnt visit often and probably wont bring wood when he does... I might have bits & pieces of wood in the loft. I will do potatoes in some tubs I have as well as in the ground --need sort out a plan for planting so they last all summer. A local veg grower says early june for potatoes for here, so do onions/carrots go in same times as potatoes ?