Seeing as I’m not doing much gardening myself this year I figured I’d just write more about it! After chatting to a few friends both offline and online, I’ve noticed a lot of people in my age range would like to try out growing their own fruit and veg but don’t necessarily know where to start. I’m pretty lucky in that I have my Dad on hand to ask all of my questions to, plus my parents gave me The Complete Gardener by Monty Don (a celeb TV gardener in the UK) which is a pretty good read.
Anyway, so I figured I’d start a few posts on setting up a new garden, what you need to do, think about and where to start, along with when to start planting your seeds etc. The timings on this are designed for people in the UK (and will probably suit Europe), but the information should apply to most people.
Getting Started
Okay so first off you need to look at what you’ve got to work with. Don’t let the lack of a garden put you off gardening. A sunny windowsill is all you need to get started, of course the more space you have the better. So you need to decide how much you’re going to do or how much you have the potential to do.
- Growing in pots on a sunny windowsill.
- Growing in pots and a grow bag or two outside on the patio or clearing.
- Digging up the ground, growing larger plants in the ground along with smaller plants in pots.
- You’ve got the space in the garden for every gardener’s dream. A salad garden here, a strawberry patch there, plenty of space for all your favourite foods plus a fruit tree or two.
Depending on which level you intend to garden at, some of this info won’t be relevant however I’ll cover all aspects as best I can.
Garden Preparation
For those who are going for the actual gardening aspect, and are ready to attack the ground in their back garden, then you need to determine what you’re going to do and grow there. Also, what type of soil do you have, what areas catch the sun and when. For most plants you’ll want them to get the morning or afternoon/evening sun. The midday sun is usually the hottest, and in the peak of summer a lot of plants won’t like the midday sun, especially your salad plants, but if you can cover these over then it shouldn’t be so much of a concern.
The best garden is a south facing garden. This gives you maximum sun exposure on at least 3 sides of the garden. You also then need to think about what will sit best where. The west facing side will get the morning sun, however once the sun goes off that side, it will start to cool, and if it gets too cold over night and then a strong sun on them first thing in the morning this could cause the plants damage. This side is better suited to plants that are happier in cooler conditions and that can perhaps withstand the potential colder temperatures such as garlic (the colder the temperature the stronger the garlic) and potatoes.
Your ground will also need inspecting. If it’s clearly not been touched in a while then you may need to give the ground a dig through, check for any rubbish (plenty of builders and non gardeners will happily dump and bury rubbish, bricks, empty plastic cannisters etc.), and also inspect the type of soil you’re dealing with. If nothing’s been growing in the ground or if the ground seems in quite a bad state then it would probably be a good idea to dig in some compost or farm manure. You don’t need to dig very far down. Also if the grounds seems fairly solid with clay, you’ll need to build up the soil with manure and perhaps some top soil to give the ground a big of drainage as clay will hold water when it rains and dry out and crack when it’s hot and sunny.
A good idea can also be to build your beds up by setting up an additional barrier around the garden bed, a length of wood on its side held up with pegs in the ground. This allows you to raise the bed above normal ground height, so that rather than digging too far down into the ground you can skim the surface and instead add the new decent soil and manure on top.
The ideal time to get your garden ready is now. Any plants grown from seeds won’t be going into the ground just yet, so this should give you a couple of weeks to start preparing your ground ready for when the spring and warmer weather hits.
If you’ve already got some plants in the ground such as raspberry canes, strawberry plants, fruit bushes, herb plants, then obviously you don’t want to dig these up to dig any nutrition into the soil for the year ahead. Take your compost or manure and add this onto the top of the soil around the bottom of the plants. This is known as mulching and should be done in either October/November time and/or in early spring (so… now!).
Oh wow, this is an amazing set-by-step replacement for those of us who are completely incompetant but wistful about gardening. I’ve never gardened before in my life, nor had a close relationship with a gardener, but we’re moving to California this summer and I’m super excited about growing herbs and eventually moving up from there, depending on whether I kill everything off in the first go. The thought of actually having a relationship with the food that I eat is really attractive, for both romantic and ethical reasons. We’ll be arriving in July — must I wait until spring 2009 to get anything going, or is there anything I can do with window-sill pots beforehand? Thanks so much for this fabulous post!
Hey Neen, glad you liked the post. It’s the first in a series of posts as mentioned. I’ve just published the second – Planting the Seeds.
Herb growing should be pretty easy as these are often the easiest plant to grow and plenty of garden centres will sell these pre-grown for a cheap price (well they do in the UK so I’d hope they do in California!).
Of course, your climate is a bit different to ours so you may need to check out a californian growing guide, or have a look in a local garden centre to see what they’ve got an abundance of, check their seed packs etc. and see what that suggests for planting times. However I’d imagine that you can at least get some basic salad going once you arrive at your new home, or even where you are now. I’ve mentioned about Lettuce, Radish and Spring Onion on the second post, all of which I’ll be growing throughout the summer in pots here.
You may also be able to buy tomato plants pre-grown from the local garden centre either now or soon, and with your summery weather probably lasting a lot longer than ours, planting these out into a grow bag in July will probably be okay, especially if you re-pot the plants into larger pots before then. To be honest, you can grown tomatoes in a tiny little tub, you just won’t get as many as when you put them in a grow bag.
The next post will do out a list of plants and when to sow and reap them. Of course, it’s only an estimate guide but hopefully the typical weather guide at the same time will help you