Whether you’ve got a large allotment, garden veg patch or you’re growing vegetables on the patio, growing your own has many benefits: It will get you more active, and helps you and your family to eat a more balanced diet – especially if you get the kids involved! There is also little more satisfying a task than to dig up your home-grown potatoes and carrots, pick and eat peas straight from the pod, and cut your own fresh, delicious salad leaves. In this leaflet, we will give you some how you can grow veg with however much space you have.
Patio vegetables. There are many ways in which you can grow produce in containers, in places where there is no open ground:
- Grow cut-and-come-again salads, spring onions and baby root vegetables such as radishes, carrot ‘Paris Market’ and salad turnips, in large pots or troughs among your flowering pot plants.
- Fill vegetable planting bags with compost for growing potatoes and many other vegetables – this makes a great temporary growing area that can be emptied and stored after harvest, to be used again next year. year.
- Buy raised beds. Raised beds in either wood or plastic are available with legs that bring the soil level up to a comfortable working height. They are usually deep enough to grow all sorts of vegetables in, and are great if you have limited mobility.
- Grow climbing beans and peas up support structures like Trellis or an obelisk, where they will scramble up and can be picked easily.
Beds & borders. The more attractive and ornamental vegetable types such as black kale, Lollo Rosso lettuces, swiss chard and red cabbages can be planted amongst flowering plants in your beds and borders. This is a great solution to a small garden, or where a traditional, less tidy veg plot would be overlooked
The veg plot. In a medium to large garden, it’s worth setting aside an area where vegetables can be grown for the table. Often these are hidden away at the back of a garden, behind a fence: However, veg plots can look very attractive if you design them with garden design principles in mind. The French Potager garden is a great example – low level raised beds in geometric shapes, perhaps arrayed around a focal point, such as a climbing rose on an obelisk, or a large pot full of attractive (and edible) leaves. Don’t be afraid to sow or plant flowering plants to inject some colour, and varieties with edible flowers like Calendula, Primula and Viola. Also, make sure you include some attractive vegetables, such as scarlet flowered runner beans. This will all help to make your plot a feast for the eyes as well as providing fantastic vegetables!
The . For those who can commit the time and energy, an allotment is a chance to grow bumper crops and much more variety than most garden plots can offer. It is also true that you can grow bigger quantities for not much more than you would pay on a smaller scale. Crop rotation is the practice of changing what is grown on each section of your ground each year, to avoid the build-up of crop-specific pests and diseases, and to keep the ground fertile. This is recommended anywhere you grow vegetables in the open ground, but it is a lot easier on an allotment.
How do I grow . . . . . ? Instructions for how to sow, grow and care for a type of vegetable will be on the packet or plant label. If at all unsure, or for any other information, ask the plant expert at your local Cherry Lane garden centre.
