How do you make your choice ?

As gardeners do you tend to stick to certain vegetables to grow every year and hone your skills at just perfecting the specific vegetable or do you pick and choose as you like or what you fancy at the moment , I'm interested in how you decide what your going to grow through the year, and how you make your decisions.

 

I do the former, then add a couple of what I fancy to see if I get results mate
Then I follow the leaders on here, No point in spending time growing what is available in the shops cheap, grow what would be considered expensive in the shops
Apart from the taste experience of Tomatoes and Potatoes, runner beans home grown

Jack McHammocklashing

 

I have a "growing diary" (well .. .a spreadsheet ) from previous years. We aim to grow all the veg we want to eat for 9 or 10 months of the year ... and from past experience I grow N of this and M of that. I don't want to grow a lot more than we need, its time & effort that will not be used (we can give away surplus of course, but I have a lot of other garden to look after too ...)

Over the years I have recorded "Too much of this" and "Not enough of that" as well as "Liked the flavour of A more than B" to the point where I now have a guide that I work to.

My spreadsheet has dates that I have sowed-on in the past, so that's what I work to. It also notes dates pricked out, planted out, first & last harvest, so I can plan when I will need to do various tasks, and when the bed must be readyand when it will be cleared of the crop.

I buy seed in the 50p-a-packet sales in the Autumn. That largely dictates varieties, but in the main I stick to the ones I have grown before. Often I have two varieties - the one I know and another I am trying. For example, I always grow Mussleburgh leeks, and usually an F1 (last couple of years that's been Carlton). The F1 packet has maybe 50 seeds in it, I grow 150 leeks, or so, and I always think the F1 seed is an extravagance as a packet of Mussleburgh has enough seed to last me several years

Don't get me wrong, I am not moaning about spending 50P !! ... hang on let me dig the seed packet out ... here we go: the F1 Carlton - 40 seeds for £2.99, Mussleburgh 350 seeds for £1.69 ... that means if I had to pay full price the F1 seed works out quite expensive ... I'd need 3 packets of seeds, or 1/2 a packet of Mussleburgh. I don't think there is anything noticeably different in the taste, but the F1's are fatter (although JWK tried both side-by-side a couple of years ago and said the F1 were no fatter for him ...)

Sorry, rabbitting on, but my meaning is that there may not be much benefit in growing multiple varieties. I do it in case I find a variety I like more, and to possibly give me some protection against disease, but that's about it.

 

My rule of thumb is:
1) most important starting point for me is to grow things that we like and enjoy eating
2) grow things that are not widely available in shops, eg edible chrysanthemum, saltwort ...
3) the fruits I grow will be so much tastier than shop ones due to proper ripening before picking, eg tomatoes
4) grow things that I consider over expensive in the shops, this includes lots of leafy veg
In addition to the above I will try anything that sounds interesting and looks tasty. If the result is to my liking it will be added to my planting list for future.

So all in all there is a yearly routine and there are set vegetables to grow, however, it is fluid and there are always some changes every year.

I am impressed by Kristen's spreadsheet. I've got a much simple one which contains information like: sowing, transplanting and harvesting periods. It does help the planning process.

 

Good list

That's all mine is really, I just a bit more info - "how many" and some notes about whether we liked it / had too many/few and so on. Plus a target-sowing date as well as an actual - then it is there and staring me in the face saying "Pull finger out"!!

 

I have a very unscientific approach:

~ look at what I've been given
~ look at what came free with a magazine
~ plant
~ wait
~ if it grows -
~ if it doesn't grow: never fret

I grew my first tomatoes, spring onions and a chilli 2 years ago.
Last year I grew: tomatoes, rhubarb, broad beans, dwarf beans, spring onions, 'volunteer' potatoes, carrots, radishes and mixed salad leaves. Herbs were rosemary, mint, chocolate mint, thyme, lemon balm, green and bronze fennel, angelica.
The pigeons ate my calabrese

 

I know exactly how you feel. Some of my winter cauliflowers and spring cabbages are under netting, so they are fine. Others, including sprouts have been thoroughly destroyed by pigeons. Would like to know a way to catch them for a dish of pigeon pie?

 

Air rifle - but Mr Mum won't buy me one

 

I plan for months in advance. I read up on here and in books and seed catalogues to work out how much of what I'm going to grow. I make regular reconnaissance trips around the garden to work out where things will go. Then when I've done all that, I have a look at what seeds I've already got, and what I bought on impulse while out and about, and that's what I attempt to grow.

 

Thanks for all the replies, I really do have a lot to take in, I've got the soil prepped in one of my rasied beds, which I think I'm going to have my peas and beans growing in, the bed could do with more soil topping up, will pick up more top soil to mix in with the compost I already have in there, my second bed I'm still a little unsure, on what to grow, I have my oinion sets to plant so no doubt they will be planted in there, I also have some spring oinion seeds to sow and they will probably get moved into there too, think a little more research is needed, quite like the idea of growing some lettuce for salads in the warmer months. Are they difficult to grow, and do they need any special requirements ?

 

They don't do so well in the heat of summer (if we get one!) so the ones started off from now onwards will fair better than ones sown in May and later I reckon.

Best to sow little and often - I sow some once a fortnight. Don't sow a whole row - unless you want to make Lettuce soup! I figure we can use about 6 lettuce a fortnight, so that's how many I sow (but I start everything off in pots ... which is quite a lot of faff initially, but then gives me a stream of just-the-plants-I-want), if sowing in the open ground then I recommend just to do a short row, and another in a fortnight and so on.

 

I've got one, well two actually, but the .177 wouldn't pierce the skin on a rice pudding, the .22 on the otherhand is a beast and braised pigeon breast is not only delicious but FREE!

 

Thanks Kirsten, I'm going to pick some seed up this weekend, is it a general rule of thumb to start all seeds sown in doors in trays?

 

No, I would think I am in the minority on that.

Here's my view of the conventional method:

You prepare a seed bed (nice and smooth, breaking up all the lumps) and then you make a "drill" (a shallow "trench" an inch or so deep) in the soil, lightly scatter the seeds in the drill, carefully cover it back over, wait for them to come up, and finally thin them out to the ideal spacing. That's the conventional way, although some things you would still start off inside - Courgettes would be VERY late cropping if you waited until it was warm enough [for them] to sow seed outdoors, so normally you start plants off for them indoors (or buy plants at the end of May)

I have the following "issues" with that system:

1. I'm on very heavy ground. I certainly cannot get onto my plot at present, as the soil cannot be worked to make a seed bed.

2. If the soil is cold (this year it definitely is, some years its a heatwave by now!), seed will be slow germinating. If I then find that it has failed it will be getting late to sow a replacement (this is particularly true of Parsnips, for example, as they are slow to germinate anyway ... so quite a long time before you know if they are going to grow, or not ...)

3. The weeds start off at the same time as the vegetable seeds, so they both come up together (well, the weeds win of course because they have evolved to be ... WEEDS!).

4. The weather may not be kind - too cold & wet and the seed may rot (that's not common though), but if the weather is dry then they won't germinate and you'll be having to water the row to get the seeds to germinate - without washing the seed away!

But ... that's the system that vegetable gardeners have used for millennia. Tried and Trusted.

My way:

Sow seed at spot-on-exactly the ideal time. Doesn't matter what the soil or weather is like, nor that days are short - I sow in the evening, indoors on the kitchen table, in the warm

I then move (so called "pricking out") one seedling into each small pot (a 9cm pot in my case, many people 3" or even smaller "modules"). I raise exactly [allowing for a few spares] the number of plants I want. A packet of seeds lasts me years! as I use relatively few for each batch. (I buy my seeds in the sales, so around 50p per packet, so its not a big deal for me, but it would be if you want to try 3 x F1 varieties of, say, Beetroot and they are all around £3 each packet of only 50 seeds ...

There is considerable Faff in this method. You really need a greenhouse, or conservatory, to bring the plants on. You must water them daily (when we get to Spring and its warm ). (I have irrigation systems, so its only a few minutes a day for me, but that requires having-the-gear of course).

Then when it comes time to plant out, generally around 6 weeks after sowing the seeds indoors there are a number of pluses:

• The soil is already warm.
• I hoe the area, that gets rid of all the weeds before I start
• I use a bulb planter to make planting-holes, and drop a plant in each hole (9cm pot fits neatly into a bulb-planter hole)
• I have NO gaps in my rows (which you will get if you sow seed in a drill), so I get the optimal number of plants in the space available)

The plant are already a decent size, so its going to take 4 weeks for weeds to germinate and become a treat - and by then I will have hoed them again. I won't have to carefully pick up weed seedlings from my row of precious Beetroot/whatever seedlings

One other thing is successional sowing of crops. Take Cauliflowers for example: they will "stand" in the veg patch for at absolute most a fortnight once ready they are ready for picking. So you have 14 days from first one being ready until the last one must be harvested before it has to go on the compost heap. If you grow a row of 50 plants you'll be eating Cauliflower cheese for Breakfast, Lunch and Tea for a fortnight! Or you'll be chained to the table blanching and freezing. I raise 4 - 6 Cauliflower plants each fortnight through the season, so we have a, ideal number coming ripe each fortnight.

NOTE: Some things HATE being transplanted. Parsnips for example. I grow them in a special way for transplanting. (Not a lot more effort, but I just didn't want you to assume that everything & anything can be grown in a 9cm pot and transplanted )

In summary I think it is probably fair to say that my way would be termed "advanced", and plenty of gardeners will say that I am nuts!

Possibly think of it this way about: Lets say you go to the garden centre and buy 6 Courgette plants. That's the bit that I have been doing "sowing seed indoors".

Definitely recommend that you buy plants of some crops in your first year - not for anything you can easily grow from seed, outdoors, but certainly for Courgettes, Tomatoes and probably some others.

Which has got me thinking: what plants would I recommend that a Newbie buy from a nursery. I've started a new thread to ask that:
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/what-veg-do-you-sow-direct-vs-raise-plants.50477/

 

Wow Kirsten that's a lot of information, Very informative, when transplanting my seedling into bigger pots forthe green house, should I fill my bigger pots with compost or should I go to the garden and mix some soil and compost together then plant the seedlings into that ?