an idiot's guide for a veggie rich garden - help needed

hello everybody,

i have promised to support my friend's family including kids to help them growing their own vegetable, spice and fruit in their own garden.

now the only problem is that i am totally new to gardening. so, before messing everything up - and get bad marks by the kids - i would be very grateful if you could comment and advise on plan A as worked out below (and in case it is only rubbish please feel free to suggest plan B):

plan A would be to start the project this week, i.e.

1. start seeding indoors in celled plastic trays which i would fill with standard garden soil from a garden centre.

get seeds suitable to be planted for this time of year (lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, eggplant, onions, okra, pepper). each tray cell would be filled with 2 or 3 seeds which are being placed 1/2 inch inside the soil and covered by it.

initially water the soil and cover the tray with a cloche/clear plastic. leave tray in a warm place for a couple of weeks till seedlings come out.

2. preparation of the garden's soil
at teh same time whilst planting the seeds get the garden's soil tested for its minerals. if too acidic, then get any additional fertiliser (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) as recommended, dig it into the soil and rake everything even again. leave soil until seedlings are ready for transplantation.

3. transplantation
after 3-6 weeks take seedlings out of their cells, make holes in the garden's soil at recommended planting distance and water them initially.

4. wait, weed out, wait, weed out. reep! or?javascript:void(0)

 

Sounds good to me, i am an amatuer....but you will get some more info from a book or two or tap on some of the links like tinyurl. Am sure he will spot this soon anyway.
Look out for frost, and not too much water or heat and you will be brilliant.
Its all a bit trial and error for all of us at first.

 

.... always plant a few extra for back-up... and if you are lucky not to lose any, you could plant up the spares in pots!!!!

Check out PLOTTY's posts - he is a bit of an allotment guru....

...and GOOD LUCK!!!!!

 

Hi Dummy and welcome. You seem to have the basics covered already. Unless you have very poor soil, usually it will only need the addition of organic conditioner like garden compost and in the case of potatoes well rotted manure. If it is very acid a dusting of garden lime should be given, but left for 6 weeks before planting, lime is particularly good for brassicas but do not lime for potatoes.

Cell trays are ideal for most sowings, the depths of planting are usually written on the packets. However, be ready to pot-on fast growing seedlings into larger 3 inch pots in case they outgrow the cell trays before it's warm enough to plant them out. You will also need to harden them off a bit by transferring them to a cold frame so they gradually get used to outdoor conditions. Also they will be nice big plants before going into the ground.
You could try some outdoor tomatoes like Gardeners Delight or a bush cherry type.
Pretty soon you will be so pleased with your garden that you will need to change your name :D
Best of luck to you and keep us posted with how it goes.

 

many thanks for the warm welcome including helpful advice. i am quite hopeful now that the kids won't let me fall through when it comes to the final test - harvesting.

in the meantime i will take Time's advice and check on a suitable book to prepare for the intermediate gardening level.

earlier today i had a chat with one of my friends who showed me one of her gardening books. when looking at the pictures i noticed that there is always just one type of veggi in a row. for industrial harvesting this makes total sense to me. but for a private, small garden?

wouldn't it be possible or even better to do various veggies, maybe also mixed with herbs in a row? (eg. for better pest control or to keep the fertility of the soil more in balance). just an idea... :confused:

 

Hi dummy that is a good idea try growing some onions beside your carrots to help deter carrot fly. Careful when covering seeds with soil as they may all require different depts especially lettuce seeds prob a lit dusting is all they need. The best way to learn is from your mistakes!

 

Best of luck dummy.Keep us posted.

 

Hi Dummy, I am just starting out with veg so will be interested to hear how you get on so keep us posted and good luck.

 

If you can, watch any of the old Gardeners worlds with Geoff Hamilton, he had a kitchen garden and planted stuff in little pockets amongst the flowers. Looked really good. I have an allotment, so I plant stuff in rows, but there is nothing wrong with planting amongsdt the flowers if you have a small garden.

 

again, many thanks for the very kind and helpful words. i will try to find a free webhosting company that allows me to create a website including pictures and copy.

i would be more than happy to do a regular documentation and to upload images regularly that show what's going on in the veggie garden. this way you can always comment on what you think is right or wrong. to start with:

today i did the first major step:

together with the kids of my friends i first of all filled the plastic seeding trays - each containing 15 cells - with soil that is suitable for seeding, at least according to the packaging. no problem! the kids had fun, so had i! and then we watered everything. everything needs to be wet, right? at least we were...

anyway, the only problem i had was with the seeds:

on the seed package it says "plant thinly!" :rolleyes: great! in particular when you are on a tight budget... but what does it mean, actually? probably only god knows. anyway, each cell of the tray has maybe a space of 2 x 2 inch. so, i made a rather salomonic decision: since there are 5 trays altogether i divided the seeds into 5 heaps. and then, i thought, well, let's not plant everything at once since we want to harvest stuff continuously. which also means that we need to sow consecutively at different times, right?

anyway, as somebody mentioned earlier, successfully growing your own veggies is rather a result of many years of successfully learning of what went wrong, alas. let's see. i wish everything was more fool proof and less based on trial and error.

in the end we planted quite a variety of veggy seeds: carrots, beans, onions, radish (small and big ones), courgettes, broccoli, spinach. and then also sunflowers and strawberries, to round it all up.

apart from the strawberries we made nice holes into the soil for the seeds and then covered them slightly. easy peasy. but...

next problem:

everywhere it says to use a cloche to cover the fragile seeds and to protect them against the villain, called frost. poor little thingis! i understand that. but nowhere it is mentioned as to what is the reason behind when you plant them in-house and what is mostly the case. there is no frost nor unbearable temperatures unless �¥�¸u are on a very very tight living budget. so what sense does it actually make? maybe, is it do the trial and error factor again? or is it maybe to subsidise the manufacturing companies that have specialised in ... cloches? maybe? or is it because of a strictly closed environment so that the seeds won't catch any bad disease? at least i don't know.

so, at the end of the day i told the family to use a cling film instead (to save moneÃ?Â¥) and to cover everything just in case they would dare to move all the trays to a place where it might be freezing cold or maybe even to the outside, villain world...

oh yes, one last thing: we also planted blueberries, grapes, raspberry and blackberry. but not as seeds but as small stems that you get relatively cheaply from wilkinsons. so, they are outside already, planted in soil that i used from a different patch of the garden. i used the most sunny part of the garden as i thought this can't harm.

anyway, let's see how things go. and if you have any comments feel always free to fill your mouth with relevant words so that i can learn more about this trial and error factor.

seeya

 

Hi again dummy, you have been busy.

You seem to be doing ok. Just a few points.

Firstly you do not need to sow all the seeds in a packet. Some can contain 300 seeds, which means potentially 300 plants! Normal practise is one to three seeds per cell in the tray. If all three seeds in a cell germinate the weaker two are removed to allow the strongest to grow on. If you wish the thinnings can be repotted to make more plants.

Cloches are used outside if you are sowing directly into the ground to protect the seedlings from the weather. These can be removed as the weather warms and the seedlings grow.
As your seeds are inside and so frost-free they should not need futher protection so it is probably a good idea to remove the cling film once the seeds have germinated to allow ventilation and prevent fungus rot.

A common problem at this stage is over watering. as your seed trays have cling film they should not need to be watered unless the surface of the compost starts to dry out. When you do water, it is best to put the seed trays in a tray of water until the compost is moist and allow to drain.

Your fruit canes should do just fine

 

Hi Dummy, I think you're going to do fine. One good way to get the watering right indoors...Imagine you've got a bath towel, you soak it in the bath then squeeze it and wring it out as hard as you can. Now it's not dry, but it's not exactly wet either, right? That's how wet the soil should be for your seedlings.
Good luck.

 

Also, just a thought, I use 1.5l plastic mineral water bottles cut in half around the middle as sort of cheap mini cloches, pushed down over each seedling once I plant outside...

 

..... and they are good for keeping the slugs off too!!!! (I use this every year for mini in-situ cloches and protectors). I always put a cut up the back, so, for example with beans, when the plants are higher than the cloche (they grow up out the spout)you can lift them off without disturbing the plant.)