It requires time, effort and organisation, but follow our tips for setting up your own vegetable garden you’ll soon be enjoying delicious home-grown crops no matter what its size
Everyone has a vision in their heads of what it will be like to grow their own vegetables, which usually focuses on the end result: bountiful potagers full of plants and trugs overflowing with freshly harvested crops – the delicious contents triumphantly carried to the kitchen. It takes quite a lot of work to reach that point, but it’s a satisfying process and well worth the time and effort. It’s true that nothing beats enjoying food that you have grown, nurtured and picked from your very own vegetable garden.
What size vegetable garden do I need?
If you are growing vegetables for the first time, there are some key things to consider before you get started. Most important is where the vegetables will grow – almost all need a spot where they’ll get plenty of sunshine, so for the best results it’s worth giving them a prime position. Only a handful of crops will thrive in shade, so if shade’s all you have, grow those: lettuce and salad leaves, Swiss chard, spinach, radishes and beetroot will all be fine.
As far as size is concerned, obviously the larger the space available, the more you’ll be able to grow. But the larger the vegetable plot, the more time you’ll spend caring for it (weeding, watering, keeping up with sowing and harvesting) so aim for a balance that won’t be overwhelming. To begin with, try 3m x 3m (approx. 100 square feet), and expand from there if all goes well. And don’t be disheartened if space is limited: surprising amounts can be harvested from even a small area if it’s gardened intensively. Adopting techniques along the lines of ‘square foot gardening’, where space is divided into smaller areas for a fast turnaround of smaller quantities of crops, can be a pretty and productive way to go about it.
Pots, troughs and window boxes can all be used for edible gardening if that’s all there’s room for. Much breeding work has been done to produce varieties of vegetables with dwarf habits that are more suitable for containers or hanging baskets, plus there are plenty that naturally suit container growing such as salad leaves and carrots.
Plan your vegetable garden layout
When planning your plot’s layout, it’s worth considering crop rotation and making beds that align with that. Crop rotation isn’t essential, but in a larger vegetable garden where the same types of crops are grown year-in, year-out, it can help reduce pest and disease problems that build up if those crops always grow in the same soil. In the simplest rotation, crops are divided into three groups: brassicas (cabbages, sprouts, broccoli and the like, plus swede and turnips); potatoes; and a third group that’s made up of root vegetables (carrots, beetroot, parsnips), onions (onions and leeks) and legumes (peas and beans).
The idea is to rotate each group around the three different areas over a period of three years. The root vegetable, onion and legume group follows potatoes, and the year after that the root vegetables and legumes are followed by brassicas. Legumes fix nitrogen in the soil, leaving it fertile – perfect for the nitrogen-hungry brassica crops that will follow. With their dense foliage, potatoes shade out weeds, leaving a clean bed for the crop of root vegetables and legumes that follow on from them.
In a bigger plot, the rotation could be split into four or five groups, separating root vegetables from the onion family and the legumes. Other members of the potato family (aubergines and tomatoes for example) can be grouped with potatoes, while other annual vegetables, such as salads and lettuce, cucurbits such as pumpkins and courgettes, and sweetcorn can simply be slotted in wherever there are gaps. Perennial vegetables such as globe artichokes, asparagus and rhubarb remain in the same position permanently, so just plant them in a convenient place.
Dig or no-dig?
As you create the beds, bear in mind ease of working on them. The ideal is no wider than 1.2m. That way, you can reach the middle from the paths and won’t have to tread on the soil to get access. At this point, it’s also worth considering how you do your vegetable gardening: the ‘no-dig’ method simply involves piling around 15cm of compost over cardboard and sowing or planting into that. After a year or so, any grass or weeds below the cardboard will have died off, and you simply top up the compost annually. It has won legions of fans for its ease and the speed with which it can be set up, plus it avoids disturbing the soil and its micro-fauna, which we increasingly understand to be vital for soil health and good crops, and releasing CO2 in the process. But large quantities of compost are required to keep the beds topped up. More traditionally, the vegetable garden was always dug annually, with soil-improving compost or manure being incorporated at the same time.
Decide on the crops you’ll grow
Lastly, it’s time to think about what crops to grow. It makes little sense to fill a limited space with crops that take up a lot of room, such as potatoes, which are cheaply bought, or onions, which give a limited yield for the space they need and are also fairly cheap to buy. Concentrate instead on those really special crops that only home gardeners have access to – quirky heritage varieties with superb flavour, delicate crops that supermarkets avoid stocking because they don’t travel well and those vegetables that have to be eaten with minutes of being harvested to get the full joy of their freshness.
Also think about what you usually shop for and cook with, since there’s little point growing buckets full of an obscure South American yam if you don’t like its flavour or have no recipes for it. Those things that you buy again and again and are expensive in the shops are clear winners: herbs such as parsley, basil and coriander for example, so expensive in those little bags or pots at the supermarket, but so easy to grow at home – plus you can keep cutting from the same plants for weeks. Likewise, jettison bagged salad leaves, which turn slimy so quickly in the fridge, for the home-grown freshly picked stuff.
The final technique to master is making your vegetable garden as productive as possible by successional sowing: little and often throughout the window in which a crop can be sown, to spread the harvest and avoid a glut of everything being ready at the same time. This requires discipline and a well-organised seed tin, but will pay dividends.
