Planning veg planting - confused!

twiglet98

I've dabbled a bit haphazardly with growing veg for a couple of years and am trying to be more organised this year, hoping to grow more from seeds rather than buying expensive young garden centre plants.

I have a small four-shelf growhouse with a zip-front plastic cover, against a west-facing wall. The only windowsills wide enough to stand anything on are all west facing too, there isn't much room for seed trays but I'm hopeful a few things will get going until the warm weather comes.

The ground is heavy limestone clay so I've got three raised beds ready, all 4 feet wide and about 5 feet long. I have a huge patio so there's room for lots of containers, though I can't afford anything fancy, just tubtrugs and rolled-down compost bags.

One bed has beetroot (sown last year and not a single one has been eaten - do I leave it there?) and purple-sprouting broccoli, which was reduced to skeletons whilst still in the growhouse, and recovered when planted out with netting over it, that is just getting its purple heads so I guess we'll eat/freeze that soon. That bed had courgettes last summer, I have learned that I do not need 12 courgette plants to feed my family... must this bed have something different in this year? I'm not sure about crop rotation when it comes to raised beds, with replaceable compost, as opposed to soil.

One bed was used for summer salad, lettuce and radishes (huge successes), and it still has the wigwams used for broad and runner beans.

The third bed is full of well rotted manure, last year it was cardboard covering turf and just had tubtrugs of raspberries and blueberries weighing it down.

I also have two large terracotta pots with wigwams, one had runner beans last year, the other had sugar snap and sweet-peas.

I'll have strawberries and tomatoes in baskets and growbags again.

Can I use the same pots for beans and peas, or do they need to have something different? I can scrape off the top of the compost to refresh it.

I've sown sweetcorn seeds today, 'Lark', and they are indoors for now. How high do they get? It's so windy here it may be doomed. I thought of putting them in the deepest bed, the salad bed, as the others are only about 6 inches deep.

Right - this is what I'd like to grow, either in containers or the beds:

Broad beans 'The Sutton'
Climbing French beans
Sugar Snap peas "Delikett"
Mange tout
Courgettes "Defender" and "Soleil"
Sweetcorn "Lark"
Broccoli " Raab"
Carrots "Early Nantes"
Soft fruit (raspberries, tayberries, blueberries, possibly blackcurrants)
Butternut squash
Cucumber (any chance without a greenhouse?)
Tomatoes (growbag "Sungold", basket "Balconi")
Potatoes will go in compost bags.

I'd be really grateful for some help on what to put where!

elantan

hey twiglet ... i am kinda dealing with this idea just now as well ... cant really give you any practical advice except to say google plant rotation ... i am looking at a five year rotation plan to try and cut down on possible pest problems (white rot, carrot fly etc) but you can do it from 3 years no probs ...i think most gardeners do the 3 year one as it is easier to understand (apparently)

there are some really good sites that will help you plan it out ... these can range from the basic to a very confusing one ...i saw one that was 8 years but only planted 4 different family types ... oh thats one thing i did find out you are better to keep them in the family groupings

good luck let us know how you go

serena

I would grow the legumes - peas, beans and mangetout in the same bed. Don't use the one which was manured as they don't need that much. Runner beans are better grown in the ground than in pots, as they crop more heavily with plenty of water. If you use the same pots, replace the compost as they will need more food than there'll be left I would think. When you clear them in say July, you could either plant overwintering brassicas or sow oriental vegetables. If you choose the brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, you could add leeks) then the bed will be clear the following April/May, and ready for late summer crops (ones like squash, courgette, sweetcorn that are planted out late May)

The manured bed would be good for the squash, courgette and sweetcorn. Plant the sweetcorn in a block, to aid pollination (eg, equally spaced on a square), and keep it to the north of the bed, so it won't shade the other plants too much. Spaced about 12inches apart, you could grow Little Gem lettuce or mizuna in between the plants without spoiling the crop of corn.

Your salad stuff could go in the remaining bed.

There are outdoor cucumbers, bush varieties - check the catalogues - I can't grow them but I've seen them on other people's allotments.

Generally, most crop rotations separate the different plant families - eg legumes, potato/tomato, and brassicas (all the cabbage family). Easy enough to do if you're working in an acre, not so easy with small beds! You could try swapping above ground crops with below ground crops, digging in garden compost each time you replant.

I use a variation, based on grouping together crops which occupy the ground at the same time, but I grow very few summer brassicas.

Okay, the others... I would try to find a bit of fence for the tayberry, which will be far easier to grow and train there. Put up some vine eyes and wires.I would also look to plant the raspberries out. They will need to be somewhere where they can produce runners that won't get in the way of other things. Don't use mushroom compost to dig in, they hate the lime (yes, the voice of bitter experience there...insert roll-eyes smiley)

I would suggest investing in some horticultural fleece to cover crops when you plant them out -( and to keep over the carrots, as it will help keep out carrot fly), to protect from wind and low temperatures.

twiglet98

Thank you Serena, this is incredibly helpful!

On Monday I [STRIKE]pulled up [/STRIKE] harvested all the beetroot, which had gone into a raised bed with purple sprouting broccoli after the courgettes had come out. I didn't thin the beetroot and the dozen roots vary from tennis ball size to marble size. Some others were rotten. The family are clearly suspicious of stuff coming into the kitchen covered in mud/soil/compost or whatever. They like PICKING tomatoes, fruit, salad leaves... they like picking sugar snaps and beans, as long as I do the topping and tailing... they like roots to come washed, in nice plastic bags. These are not little tots, the youngest is 18! They're wondering why I'm bothering with anything BUT salad leaves and tomatoes, and to be honest, so am I - but maybe I'll have a freezer full of veg that I can still be eating when they all move out!

serena

Happy to help twiglet!

I've had my allotment for 19 years now - took it on when I left work to be with DS1 - 6 months old at the time. My three have been brought up with home grown vegetables, and don't really like shop veg - I can just see them growing salads in a window box at uni!

If you want some further reading, then I can recommend Grow Your Own Vegetables by Joy Larkcom - I still think the first part is one of the best guides to gardening that I've read. You won't get pretty pictures, but it's brilliant. Borrow Sarah Raven's The Great Vegetable Plot. There are quite a few of her articles on her website as well. Sarah takes a different tack to vegetable growing, but I actually really rate her - what both of them have in common, is that they actually do it! Your teens may like to know that all the bags of salads in the supermarkets are down to Joy Larkcom, who pioneered this in the 70's!

One tip from Sarah Raven is to wash the produce as soon as you bring it in. I now do this, and it makes me feel much more enthusiatic about cooking it as well as the rest of the family. Though there's still nothing better than pulling a baby carrot, giving it a quick rub under the tap, and crunching away - especially if there's a handful of strawberries or raspberries to follow....

To give your teens credit, they have a very good point about growing what your family will eat:D

RAS

twiglet

You might find Charles Dowdings book on growing salads interesting - he details what he planted and cropped off two 8 by 4 beds for instance. 3 or 4 KILOS of stuff per week in mid-summer. He suggests growing non-salad items in half the space early in the year to reduce the summer glut and then planting autumn/winter salad crops between June and September to replace them.

twiglet98

Thanks again Serena, and RAS - I have some garden design books, bought when I got this house on half an acre, and abandoned when I learned what vile stuff clay soil is - I have shrubs and perennials on a tiny patch at the front, but the back has just been down to grass until I had the summer of 2008 recuperating from surgery, got a couple of growbags, and now I can't understand why it took me so long to consider the no-dig option. I do read the weekend gardening pages sometimes (at work the following week!) and I've torn out some pieces by Sarah Raven, I didn't realise she had a website.

The family, sadly, are just plain lazy about cleaning grubby vegetables, and I've nobody to blame for that but myself - I stopped caring about the state of my fingernails long ago!!

Hacked back a huge clump of lemon balm last week and forgot it had chives underneath. They're growing like mad now they have light again, and I already have a pot by the door. The first glut of the year, chives to freeze!

The prospect of 3-4 kg of salad is pretty daunting. Whatever would you do with it?