This weeks episode is an answer to a listener question on how to start a vegetable garden from scratch. 

Question: 

We are thinking of digging a vegetable patch in our back garden.

We have ½ Acre out the back and I’m not sure where to start.  It’s a big lawn with few trees in the middle. We are thinking of basic veg – potatoes, onions, carrots, pea’s, scallions etc.  

I know we will have to dig up the back but don’t know if we will just dig it up / have to line it etc. ?

Answer:

It's a great question and one that many people have at this time of the year and especially now as people have more time on their hands. Every situation is different in terms of the time people have to invest in a garden, space available etc. but specific to this question here are a few tips to get started in the first year. 

(1) Sounds obvious but start with the veg you and your family will eat. Within that list then start with the easiest ones to grow because it's important to get success to build confidence. So, choose varieties from within the veg you want to grow and buy your seed soon. Also, buy your seed potato & onion sets now. Once you have these sourced make a sowing plan 

(2) "No Dig" is a great method for busy working families because it is exactly what it says growing without heavy digging. So, your time is being spent planting, sowing, harvesting (all the nice jobs) rather than the heavy digging etc. This is a method I will be using in my garden this year. To start mark out beds on the ground, the length of the beds is up to you and what suits your garden for the width I recommend 1.2m wide approx. This means you can reach into the middle from both sides at ease. Once beds are marked out mow or strim any vegetation on it down to as low as you possibly can, this can be done now. Once this is done get brown cardboard and cover all the ground area of the beds with the cardboard and cover with Mulch about 3 inches thick.  Mulch/compost you can easily do yourself but for year 1 recommend buying some good quality compost (must be composted mulch not bark mulch or peat compost). 

(3) leave these beds until nearly the end of March and then they will be ready to start sowing. Sow potato and onions sets first in late March and then in April start sowing your other vegetable seeds. Use successional sowing which basically means if you get for example scallions rather than sowing the whole packet at once you would sow what you would use in a two weeks period and then repeat every 2-3 weeks this means you continually will have fresh veg coming on. same principle for other veg you choose. 

Some fruits are also super easy to grow and good to add in to create some diversity and great if involving children in the process. Fruits such as strawberries, autumn fruiting raspberries and other soft fruit. 

So, these are my tips to get started and best of luck with it, be sure to let me know how you go this year. 

There will be a blog post on this episode very soon on my website. This blog and previous blogs along with all podcast episodes are be available on my
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John