Mini vegetable plot

My partner and I are newbie gardeners, so I have no idea if we've done right or wrong but this is the state of play.

We want to have a go at growing veg so dug up a triangle between the house and decking 6.5 X 9ft with a curved border like this



Our garden is beautiful and thats all we could sacrifice to work with.

We dug out about half a metre or more through grass, tarmac, stone and finally clay soil and replaced the whole lot with sandy loam.

Where do we go now?

I understand you need to rotate your crops but given that the plot is small we were thinking this year we will do all roots, next year beans and then year after brassicas.

I have bought seed potatoes, and seed for parsnip, beetroot, carrot, leek and turnip. But realistically how many different types of vegetable will we get in this space? Although its small we want the space to be as productive as possible.

Would we be better to just sow all one vegetable in the space?

We will do runner beans in borders and salad stuff/ courgettes/ tomatoes in pots. Which we have done before successfully.

 

Hi seampoints, and welcome to the site. grow your potatoes in pots as well. T

 

Hi seampoints, and welcome to the site. grow your potatoes in pots as well. This will give you enough room for more varieties of plants. Get some of the smaller varieties of cabbages and caulifowers even sprouts. See what your local garden centre has to offer.

 

Go and buy the Vegatable and Herb Expert by DG Hessayann, it will tell you everything you need to know.

 

Hi seampoints, grow as much as you can in containers and divide your growing plot into squares. Plant closer together than recomended and forget about planting in rows. Think about height as well as spread for growing more than one crop in any one square, i.e. sweet corn for height grown with courgettes for ground cover. Peas and beans take up little space, surround them with greens and radish. The extra plants will take a lot of nourishment out of the soil so be prepared to incorporate extra plant food into the ground, also special attention to watering as all your plants will be competing for moisture. This sort of compact gardening is becoming very popular, look up 'square foot gardening' for lots of ideas.

 

Thanks chaps. Already have that book, its become a bit of a bible for us.

Terrier, I think I'm definately going to do more research into this square foot gardening lark. I think I might have to buy that book people here are recommending. Hmmm I just don't see how crop rotation could be effective in such a small space. Unless you actually divide the ground with deep boards?

Also, it does seem very ambitious and a bit frightening for a beginner

 

Crop rotaion is always a problem in a small area, but don't forget you can grow most things in containers and that widens your scope for rotation.