Your challenge - what should I grow?

Jolanta_Nowak

Ok, a 2 x 5 yard strip of fairly clay-ey soil which does not get full sunlight.

It's doing absolutely nothing at the moment except for staring at me accusingly and screaming 'plant me!'

But with what? It's no good for lawn. I'd want to turn it to some productive use.

Can anyone recommend their best suggestion for a food crop combining:

1 Ease of cultivation

plus

2 Maximum yield/savings on the shopping bill

... please?

frivolous_fay

Are you me?

I have clay sail, apparently poor drainage, lots of moss and little sun. It's also very stony but I don't know if the stones are a good thing!

I've got my beady eye on the lawn... it's in a total state and I can't help thinking it would be better to give up on the grass.

angelavdavis

Clay doesn't necessarily mean it is low in nutrients. You can dig in compost, well rotted manure and gravel to help the drainage and texture of the soil.

Spinach is easy to grow and will grow in some shade - at over £1 for a small bag, its worth growing yourself.

Rocket and other cut and come again salad leaves - expensive to buy yet very easy to grow.

Potatoes - you might get some slug damage for year one although you can bait them. Also, you might get some eelworm as you haven't cultivated the soil much so productivity might be on the low side initially. You can plant the tubers straight in the soil, get them sprouted first on the window sill then put some sand under the tuber to stop them rotting off in the clay soil before taking hold.

Peas - I have always been lucky growing peas in clay, start them off in toilet roll tubes filled with compost in seed trays on the window sill. Pick them immediately before shelling, boiling in water and serving.

Purple sprouting broccolli - slow to grow but will continue sprouting after you cut the first few spears.

White/Red onions - never had a problem growing these in clay.

Generally, if you start plants off on the window sill and plant them as small plants, they will stand a better chance.

I would personally steer clear of other root veg until you have cultivated the site for a couple of seasons as they might rot off.

I would also dig over the soil and add the additions mentioned at the top of the post, then cover with old carpet or weighted down plastic to stop it getting too waterlogged a few weeks before planting. It is usually recommended to turn over the soil in late autumn and leave the big clods for the frost to break down to soil without too much effort required. Having said that, digging heavy clay is hard - do a little at a time to help the back out!

If you find that the soil does not yield much after a couple of seasons, you could consider raising the beds by 6 inches which might help.

Lotus-eater

I think you are screaming for soft fruit production, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, maybe a tayberry growing up a trellis. Blackcurrant or jostaberry?

Maximum goodness and money saving. Maximum ease of cultivation

Just how much sun does the area get? If it gets half a day then the soft fruit should be ok.

FF, you could try making raised beds to improve the drainage.

Jolanta_Nowak

Thanks for all the suggestions, Angela.

Yes, it gets about half a day's sun

Soft fruit hadn't really occurred to me. Wouldn't that be a pain with all the slugs and birds?

frivolous_fay

I'm not clever enough to offer advice on gardening usually, but my in-laws grow an autumn-fruiting raspberry, and the birds don't bother with it! (They'd been plagued by birds on their other raspberries)

They get a bumper crop each year and have more than they know what to do with!

Lotus-eater

Jolanta_Nowak wrote: »

Thanks for all the suggestions, Angela.

Yes, it gets about half a day's sun

Soft fruit hadn't really occurred to me. Wouldn't that be a pain with all the slugs and birds?

Slugs will bother fruit alot less than vegtables :rotfl:although they do like strawberries.

You will have to net against birds for some fruit, or just share the crop with them.

Honestly, for saving the most money, growing types of lovely fresh fruit you can't buy in the shops and easiness, fruit is the best. Once you get them going they need very little work, especially if you plant them through weed supressing fabric and they will crop for years.

Pick the fruit you like and grow some of that. I always refer to Bob Flowerdew........ if you like strawberries, why are you growing long lines of cabbages???

Jolanta_Nowak

We eat most things.

I just want to get most productivity out of this patch.

Lotus-eater

Read this
Borrowed from here
http://transitiontowns.org/Totnes/BobFlowerdew/BobFlowerdew
Loads more interesting stuff on the page.


"Stop lobbying people to grow more vegetables. Vegetables are very worthy, but they require a lot of work. Vegetables need full sun, they need a rich soil, most of them need sowing every year, they need thinning, they may not need watering here, but they will need tending, but the trouble with vegetables is they are quite picky, the same garden will never grow good carrots and good brassicas, they have two different requirement. Vegetables are nutritionally superior, but what I am suggesting is that people who want to be healthier by having more of their own in a small garden, because gardens are too small nowadays to grow everything, and people don’t have the time, is to first of all grow herbs, because herbs just add a lot of quality and take no space at all, and very little work.
The next thing is to look at most expensive purchases. If you buy a lot of garlic or hot peppers, it is probably, in terms of economics, worth growing those. If you like French Beans and you eat a lot of them it may be worth growing them, you can buy organic potatoes by the sack from an organic farmer a lot cheaper and with a lot less effort than if you grow them. If you love potatoes and you want to get into them, then grow them, but if you just want potatoes, don’t go into the efforts of growing them, because it’ll kill you with the workload.
What people should be doing is growing fruit. The benefits of fruit are radically different. Firstly the cost isn’t high. With soft fruit you can buy blackcurrants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, for less than a pint of beer or two, the plants are very cheap. You put them in, ideally you put up a fruit cage. You don’t need to, just old net curtains will keep the birds off to an extent. You can mulch underneath, thick mulches of old carpet and cardboard, throw something over the top and you’ll get a crop with doing very little."

Zazen999

Hi
i like carpentry so I would knock up some raised beds; fill with manure, cover with cardboard and/newspaper and get some spuds chitting to go in in feb/march.
I would also grow exactly what Angela said above; with some courgettes/lettuce/beetroot/toms later in the summer when the manure has kicked in. Dig some worms out of other areas of the garden and put them into the manured bed; they will break up the clay and mix the organic stuff in for you without any effort on your part. Then next year you can go for more root veg if you want [beetroot grows really fast]. The no-dig method really works - honestly!!!

I'd probably put a few fruits in there; but we don't eat meat so our crop of veg needs to be as large as possible.

Also, don't forget in August/Sept to sow your winter veg; and if you can to crop rotate to prevent pest build up - I think your plot is big enough to section off into 3 or 4 sections to do this. eg lettuce can be grown year round with some cover during the winter. I picked 3 beetroot yesterday that have been in since the summer. Leeks can be grown through the winter as well.

Use this time to plan - and buy your seeds. Look at the RHS website at the 3 foot beds and how much produce they got out of theirs - it really helped me to see 4 dimensionally at how to grow up, down and out all at the same time - as well as planning succession crops to last the year round.

Frivolous- stones are only a problem for carrots/parsnips - if you do cultivate your plot; remove the stones as you come to them but only worry if it is carrots that are going to be grown. Most other stuff will live quite happily with stones [in my opinion]. However, I do sieve my soil for my carrots beds if they need it!!! Which is why i now use really high specifically built [by me] raised beds for carrots only.

I do grow spuds - but am still alive so technically the above post about growing potatoes killing you is slightly misleading.

Lotus-eater

Sooo..... what I do.
Work out what you like to eat most (because it will taste better fresh from the garden)
Then work out of those crops what are the most expensive to buy.
Then work out which ones are almost impossible to buy.
Then work out which ones of those are easiest to grow, year on year.
Add in, if you really want to grow a certain thing (I like chilli's)

Mush it all up in your head and come up with what to grow.