This year I won’t have a proper garden to look after and grow food in. Whilst we have a garden at our new house, there’s no beds, the sun doesn’t really get into the garden and if it did, there’d be a nice Silverbirch tree to hang over the plants too anyway! Plus we’re planning to move from here by October, and I don’t want to have to worry about getting my plants out of yet another garden. So this year I’ll be growing strawberries in pots, I’ll probably get a grow bag and do a couple of tomato plants, I’ve got my herbs in pots already, and I’ll maybe do a few lettuce, radish and spring onion in some large pots as well.
At least this year we have a kitchen windowsill which the sun gets on at around 12pm and once the sun stays higher it should stay on the window for a couple of hours at least, so I may not bother with putting my greenhouse up and just start off any seeds on the windowsill instead. I’ve given my raspberry canes to a friend as I can get more of those from my Dad next year if I’ve got the opportunity to plant them out.
So there won’t be as much going on with the garden here this year, but I’ll let you know how my plant pot garden is going 
Now that I’ve got a garden I want to try my hand at growing some bits. I want to do tomatoes, because I did them as a kid and they’re not hard, but I was also thinking of trying to grow some fruit too.
Any advice you can give me? Best fruit types and whether they like sun or not, or maybe some good links? Any help is appreciated
Hey Jem,
Congrats on the new house and garden
Right first off you need to check on the soil, maybe give it a big of a light dig over and perhaps pick up a small bag of farm manure (B&Q or garden centres will have this) and just dig it in. That’s just to give the ground a bit of nourishment.
One good book to maybe pick up is the River Cottage Year as that has him writing about what he did in each month, gives you an idea of when to plant stuff and when other stuff should be ready for picking. From my own experience:
Salad:
Get some seed trays and no. 1 seed compost plus seeds for spring onion, radish, lettuce, rocket etc. Start these off either in a greenhouse (a mini lightweight greenhouse can cost about £18 from your local garden centre) or a sunny windowsill. By the time the sunny weather hits (easter on) you can probably plant these out, although if the cold weather hits, make sure you cover them over with a propogator lid (saw large ones in B&Q the other day, pretty good size too). Then with salad continue to plant a few seeds each fortnight and you should have a continued stream of salad whilst the sun lasts. Salad likes warmth and sun but not direct hot sun for the lettuce as it can dry out, so when it does get hot (or if it does this year) try and rig up some sort of cover for the lunchtime/mid afternoon sun. I had my old salad garden sort of West – South West facing so it got the sun from midday until about 5-6pm.
Tomatoes – I lost most of my tomatoes last year because of all the rain so it could be worthwhile investing in a tomato greenhouse (a portable housing designed for the size of a growbag and good height, about £17) and controlling the water yourself. Garden centres these days sell pre-grown tomato plants but seeds are, of course, much cheaper! Plants should be in the grow bags for early May time if possible.
Fruit:
Strawberries are easy and will multiple like rabbits. Pick a few plants up from the garden centre, find a patch where you will basically call your strawberry garden. Plant the new ones out about a foot apart if you can. When the fruit start showing, put some shredded paper down all below the plants so that the fruit doesn’t sit in the mud (or get muddy when it rains). You may want to put plenty of crushed egg shells (or slug pellets if you’re not fussed on organics) under the paper and around the edges to ward the slugs off. Plus they may need covering from the birds too. In the summer/autumn the strawberries will start growing new runners which will then form new plants. You can easily get 2-3 new plants off each existing one.
Raspberries – these again multiply so just get a few canes if you can. Plant them up a foot apart and then just let them grow.
Both of these I also had by the salad garden and they seemed pretty happy there for the 2 summers I had in my garden.
I’ve also grown gooseberries, after getting a gooseberry bush from my Dad. That only really got the midday sun when it was higher up (so May-September) but it still produced a few gooseberries. My Dad grows Galia Melons too, my own attempt wasn’t so great but I think I was a bit late getting the plant into the ground, and that needs plenty of sun too.
To be honest, the best thing to do is to think about what you eat a lot of, what is expensive in the shops (raspberries certainly are) and what space you have plus how permanent you want your plants to be. I know you’re renting so you need to take that into consideration as whilst a nectarine tree, say, is fantastic to have, it’s a tree which is a bit more permanent than a small strawberry patch, which you can easily take with you if/when you move.
And good luck and keep me updated with the garden
PS. Blimey my reply is as long as a post!
Cheers Sarah – brilliant response.. I think I’ll print it off and take it with me when I go shopping at the weekend.
The next task of course, is to figure out how to keep the cat off what I do grow!
No worries Jem. You’ve actually inspired me to create a type of starting up gardening type page when I have time.
As for the cat, well you can get like a power that you can put around the plants and ground which I think the cats don’t like (a bit like pepper). So that should keep the cat off the garden. Should find it in a DIY or garden centre
hi.
i’m in leeds
and for past four years i have been growing
rasberrys,tayberrys and strawberrys
rasberrys and tayberrys are easy just plant and they will grow last year we had fruit of them for about 6 months of year and it only gets morning sun
a tip with strawberrys when you get you first crop do a hard pruning and you will get second crop that year
i did toms last year butthey did not take off same as other post rain killed them of i’m trying again this year with couple out door varietys and i’m going too grow some indoors.
also potatoes in old tyres get three old tyres (get them free from garage) fill one with soil then plant a potatoe (chit first leave in sunlight for week)
when leave start growing put another tyre on and keep going until you are as high as you want (i only go three high about 4ft) for stabality and when they flowerer start picking you can even rotate the tyres so when you gather poatatoes from top tyre put that on floor and thats second stack.
ideal for small gardens