Edible Gardening For Newbies

sorry if you clicked this thread thinking it was guide, its far from it,

i am wanting to create a vegetable patch in my garden, not a big one, but i need to learn where to start,

im thinking, cabbage, tomatoes, thats where my knowledge stops what other things are possible to grow?

and on a difficulty scale whats best to start with for a beginner?

this is the patch where i want to grow,



any help and advice is greatly appreciated.

 

Late in the year, but you could still get some stuff in for overwintering.

Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Land Cress, Lambs Lettuce, Mizuna, Rainbow Chard, Leaf Beet, Garlic and Japanese Onions for a start

 

My advice is:

Grow what you like to eat (#1 important thing as @JWK said)

Grow varieties with great flavour / flavour that you like - particularly where the varieties sold in Supermarket are more bland - e.g. farmers choose varieties with thick skins that don't bruise easily, and all harvest at same time for their convenience, and have excellent yield - they often taste lousy! - I'm happy with low yield, poor disease resistance etc. to get the Best Flavour.

High value crops - I don't grow main crop potatoes, they are cheap-as-chips (Sorry!) from farm shops in Winter ...

You only have a small area, so I would recommend high-yield-per-unit-area - Brassicas like Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower will be out on that basis - they need 2'6" per plant. Runner Beans / Climbing French Beans will be in (and they are a high-cost vegetable, because of picking costs, so will give good return).

I would also go for short-season crops - things that crop in a short period of time. Again, Brasscias are a long season crop, so in the soil for anything up to 9 months before they crop, so they are out, along with Parsnips.

On my list would be Lettuce, Courgettes, Carrots (difficult if you have heavy or stony soil), Beetroot. Leeks maybe.

Potatoes are not very high yield, but New Potatoes are expensive in shops, taste better really freshly harvested, and can be followed by green veg, or leeks, so they might be worthwhile.

I wouldn't bother with Tomatoes outside. The crop late in the season, and not for very long (before Autumn arrives ... ), and are very prone to Blight, so in some/many years you will lose the lot before you get to harvest. I'd leave them for when you have a bit more experience.

Ideally you should rotate vegetables - so you grow Peas/Beans in an area one year, then Brassicas the next, then Onions, then Roots ... that's designed to prevent diseases, specific to a single type of veg., getting a hold and by changing crops you take different nutrients from the soil. But that's difficult to do in a small plot .. but try to have one eye on that.

 

P.S. If you have a Gardening Centre Group garden centre near you they should have just started their 50p-a-packet seed sale, so you can buy this year's seeds for sowing next year at a knock down price.

http://www.thegardencentregroup.co.uk/garden-centres/find

Don't go too mad though! its easy to have far too many seed packet varieties ... I know!

 

I think that hedge may make your life difficult for you as it will probably suck a lot of nurients out of the ground before your crops get hold of it. I have a Privet in my veg patch and I ran a path along it made with paving slabs to act as a sort of boundary, roughly about 2 foot wide. Not sure if you would have much room left if you did this though.

I'd personally turn it into a very small potager garden and fill it with runner beans up obelisks, so it looks nice and is also productive.

 

This year was my first attempt at growing veg. My carrots were terrible, I don't know why they failed but they did.
Courgettes were SUPER easy. I had 3 plants, 2 of them are really strong and large, these are in my raised bed with compost. The other one was just in my boarder with lower quality soil and was about 1/4 the size but still produced lots of courgettes. And you can do a lot with them too in the kitchen.

My other success was sweet corn. I had 2 blocks of 6 plants, only needed about 30cm x 50cm space for each block. I can tell you now that they are fantastic, they only produced 1 cob per plant, but they are the nicest cobs I have ever tasted. I am going to plant lots more next year. Probably build a raised bed just for sweetcorn.

Also radish is really easy to grow, and fast too, so fast that I kind of got bored having to keep sowing new rows all the time

 

My sweetcorn didn't get away this year, only left it in as the beans are climbing up it

Just watered the Mizuna, peas, land cress and spring onions in the cold frame, on a mission there as Sis reckons I won't get a crop before the weather changes

 

Don't be in a rush to sow early in the year - warm soil makes a big difference to germination.

That's a pretty much a given for home grown sweetcorn (make sure you don't pick it until the pan of water is on the stove, and boiling, it loses it sweetness if you "store" it).

But its a low-yielding crop, so you need plenty of space. I've grown Lark this year, instead of Swift, and got several cobs per plant. Not sure if that is a fluke, but I'm definitely going to try it again next year. Don't mix varieties (or make sure that they carry pollen at different times)