Great “Easy Lucrative Garden Crops” Hunt: What costly foods can you grow with ease?

rhiwfield

Rosie, raspberries are normally planted in the period Nov-March when they are dormant so its prob too late now unless you buy one in a container.

For an apple tree and limited space you can go for a patio one or for a trained tree. There are several different training shapes, photo is of a self fertile cox espaliered.

COX

For cherries decide whether you want a cooking or dessert cherry, same for apples. Check out pollination requirements as well.

rosie383

Someone mentioned splitting a bulb of garlic, to plant out. Am I too late for this now? If so, when is the best time to do it as we use a lot of garlic at home?

purplepardalis

Too late for garlic this year I'm afraid.

We planted ours in December and are still patiently waiting for it to be ready.

The rule is - you plant it on the shortest day of the year and harvest it on the longest - or thereabouts.

But yes, you do split a bulb and plant the cloves. We bought specific bulbs for planting from the Isle of Wight garlic company.

AJS71

nihtevert wrote: »

Divide up a bulb of garlic and plant each clove a couple of inches down and a couple of inches apart. It's ready to harvest when the leaves wilt and go brown

Best to do in a pot as the ground will smell of garlic for evermore!:eek:

rosie383

Thanks guys. So, December in a pot. Got it. Does it need to be a big deep pot, or can I use one that is about 6" deep and 1' long? Like one for a window sill.

rhiwfield

Got to say that I move my garlic patch in line with rotation plan and have never noticed ground ponging of garlic!

If you have choice of pots or ground I'd go for ground anytime. With 36 plants growing at the mo thats would be an awful lot of pots to fill with compost and water. FWIW I plant in November and expect to lift in July. Like maincrop onions they take little space for the amount of crop produced especially if sown in a block.

AJS71

Ginni_B wrote: »

I saw a great idea in an RHS book where you attach some green wire trellis to a fence in your garden and wire pots up and down it with herbs and any trailing veg like tumbling toms and hestia dwarf runner beans, like a vertical garden.

Ohhh - I am SO going to try this - it sounds brilliant!! :T

AJS71

Originally posted by rhiwfield
Got to say that I move my garlic patch in line with rotation plan and have never noticed ground ponging of garlic!


Ahh - when I was a student we had a tiny patch of earth in the garden and grew nothing but garlic there as that is what we got through the most (there were 7 of us!) patch had probably been used constantly for around 9 years

rosie383

When we first had the garden laid with new topsoil about 1 month ago, all I had to put in were some packets of flower seeds which all were out of date and had been in my mum's cupboard. Also I had a bag of poppy seeds from my friend's garden. I was so anxious to do something that I went out with my 2 year old and we scattered ALL the seeds in the bed which is to be my flower bed, thinking that most of them wouldn't take........ but they have, ALL of them!!!!!!
I'm sure it will be nice in about a month, but my query is...... some of them went into what are my new veg patches ( it was a windy day, what can I say? I'm an enthusiastic novice!). Should I just leave the few that are coming up there? Is it OK to let the flowers and veg share space? And I am now realising why they say to sow seeds in rows, and mark where you sow them, 'cos apart from the poppies, I have no clue about what I sewed, so it will be a nice surprise I hope!

Primrose

rosie - at least you'll have more than one 'Lonely little petunia in your onion patch!'. The only problem with letting your flowers continue to grow in your vegetable area will be that they could extract too much moisture or nourishment from the soil at the expense of your vegetables, especially if the weather is very dry and if they're not pulled up before they go to seed you could find some of them perpetuating themselves the following year. I find that antirhynums are particularly good at this. I even throw the husks of finished flowers onto the compost heap and after a year of rotting down still often find little antirhynums popping up between the veggie rows a year later. I usually just transplant them elsewhere. Poppies also seem to do the same thing.