Show Us Your Veg Patch - You Know You Want To!! (Merged Thread)

jtb2412

Thanks Lotus-eater, really appreciate the advice :beer: ! I shall pull them out tomorrow.

You're right about the allotment, loads of weeds but we'll get there, slowly but surely

hathor

I'm starting to plan out my veg scheme for next year, and want to give things the best chance, given that my patch has so many disadvantages, so I'm asking for help (again)!

I've read that peas & beans fix nitrogen via their roots, so when the plants have finished, I should cut them off close to soil level, rather than pull them out, so that this benefit is not lost.

Is there any advice about what would be best planted to follow them, to make most advantage of this, or alternatively, what I should NOT put to follow peas & beans?

I have found useful info about companion planting, what to put together and what must be kept apart, but nothing on any preferred succession crops.

What do you experts suggest?

jtb2412

Hathor

You could put sweetcorn in after beans (if you've got the space !) Sweetcorn takes up a lot of nutrients out of the ground so the soil would be ideal if you've had beans in there previously. We're going to put dwarf beans in the soil where we had our sweetcorn this year, for the exact reason of putting nutrients back in the ground.

I don't think there's anything that I've heard of that you shouldn't put in after beans but I might be wrong !

Not an expert here but been reading lots of books/magazines lately ! lol

hathor

Thanks JTB

As you suspected, I haven't room for sweetcorn, but I can certainly see the logic.

I wonder whether carrots would suffer, as all the books say they shouldn't go in freshly-manured ground, else they will fork. As you can tell, I don't know what the "active ingredient" in poo is, that is too strong for carrots!

Primrose

I have fairly limited veggie growing space and grow my climbing beans and tomatoes in our south facing border. As they both like plenty of humus and nutrients around their roots I simply swap their growing positions in respective years, as well as digging whatever manure I can spare into the trench where they roots will be. I've been following this pattern for 30 years now without any detriment to their crop, as well as leaving the bean roots in the soil. The thing you have to be careful with is to try and not grow the brassica family (cabbages, brussel Sprouts, Kale, etc) in the same location every year as if club root takes hold, it can remain in the soil and reinfect subsequent crops.

Steel_2

Hi everyone

I decided to resurrect this thread as it was one of my favourites last year and as there's lots of people starting to grow their own, I want to be nosy and see some pics!

My garden looks like a bomb site at the moment and there's nothing really growing in the veg patch, so I thought I'd post a few pics from LAST year to get us in the gardening mood.....









And finally, two out of three of my slug hunters:

MRSMCAWBER

Im glad I read that properly :rotfl:
I saw the huge lettuce and thought you had got off to some amazing start THIS year ..and was :eek: at the state of my potio apotment :rotfl: ...*sigh of relief*
Im glad this thread has started up again -I loved it -I have started a blog but love to see what everyone else is doing,

Im having a go at growing much more this year (including 20 tomato varieties )-again, all in pots n tubs and have made a brassica tent out of some arches I got for €2 each and some old gazebo mosquito curtains
At the moment Im at the putting all the pots etc in place -so once they are all sorted I will post some pics and then do some as things grow..

looking forward to seeing what everyone else is doing

Steel_2

MRSMCAWBER wrote: »

Im glad I read that properly :rotfl:
I saw the huge lettuce and thought you had got off to some amazing start THIS year ..and was :eek: at the state of my potio apotment :rotfl: ...*sigh of relief*

I got started quite early this year, but not quite that early :rotfl:

I have some really good sized mange tout, dwarf French beans and courgette ready to go out once the next cold snap is over. Potatoes are chitting quietly away, I have some onion sets to plant shortly, and I've just potted on my tomatoes, swiss chard, brussels and fennel, which are about 4-6 inches high at the moment.

The herbs and peppers are still too small to pot on yet and I've had complete germination failure on the butternut squash and cos lettuce so got to sow again.

Today I'm about to sow leeks and onions into flats and construct a raised bed for some carrots and parsnips.

catgirl

can i join you this year?
its my first proper year of the veg garden ,we moved to a bigger house middle of last year so we had more room to grow our own and so we had room for baby number 2 who arrived a month after moving in "funny" story about that but anyway (no not a cabbage patch kid:rotfl:).

built the first raised bed before baby was born, neighbours were equally shocked and amused by me sawing planks and shovelling soil at 8 months pregnant lol. in that bed we grew just some lettuce as I was itching to get going but it all got sadly neglected up until I put some overwintering onions in, they don't seem to be doing much at the mo tho, have sprouted green bits (can you tell im up with the lingo) but dont seem to be doing much else.

have built a 2nd bed this year and hopefully depending on money can build a 3rd (neglected to say we also have a long bed for beans/peas). over the next few weeks i will be getting my grandads green house when we can get up there and dismantle it which will be lovely to reuse but also because it was my grandads and he loved growing his tomatoes so he would be pleased with what i am doing:D
planted up lots of seeds the other weekend flower and veg, a few have started to sprout so all seems to be good so far.:T

i think im going to do a sort of blog for myself on flicker as cant be bothered with all the writing but im always on flicker anyway so seems like a god idea fr me, i shall post a link when i have some pics up.

looking forward to everyone elses posts!!(sorry if mine is a long one, i tend to waffle)

bxx

Doom_and_Gloom

Thank goodness I was starting to wonder if this thread would start up again or if someone would start a new one saying 'Show us your veg patch 2009 - you know you want to' or similar :rotfl: . I've started a few things already. Tomatoes, Peppers, leeks, parsnip, cauliflower, melon and strawberries so far and will continue to sow them when I feel I need to.

I'm hoping to sow lettuce, radish, sweetcorn, spring onion, sunflowers, spinach, courgette brussel sprouts, peas, onions, spinach beet as well as my herbs today or at least soon . I am loving sowing everything and watching it grow as last year I did start late and didn't get to grow as much. It does keep my mind off of the hopsital oppointments that I'm having a lot of at the moment though at least :rolleyes: .

Steel those pics from last year of your plants are really impressive. I hope you have just as much luck this year to.

D&G