Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

Being a primary school teacher means i get more extended holidays than most people. This enables me to spend lots of time out in the garden during the main planting time of Easter, but also to get on top of things during the Winter season. The last day or so has been spent looking at the successes, failures and ‘missing parts!’ of last year’s veg planting plan and doing lots of scribbling and crossing out to improve it.

The main changes are:

1. The plot will be a lot fuller (i forgot to plant many ‘leaves’ this year and hardly any winter veg that grew.)

2. There will be no flowers growing in the beds (they will have their own pots…somewhere as they seemed to take over, particularly the sunflowers, as the beneficial insects are only good if there is space to grow!)

3. Potatoes will be added into the rotation (i’ve decided that First Earlies can go in before the leeks need the space.)

4. The colours have been changed to make the plan easier to read.

I have included the ‘winter veg planner’ below. Click it or print to make it easier to read. This is the best quality i could get it before it became too large for the page! Things like tomatoes, sweetcorn, lettuces etc and herbs will all be grown in pots, hanging baskets or in the beds where there is space (!?). I will add a section for these later next week. I know a few people have been following some parts of the plan. I hope that things have worked, and would love to hear about any successes, failures, questions or recommendations!

I know the plan may look a bit ‘much’ but i know that this way, we are more likely, via the 4 year rotation, to have less diseases in each veg family, to know exactly what and where we can grow and to grow plants in an order so that the previous years plants prepare the soil for the next years!

 Happy planning!

3 of the last 5 weeks have been spent digging out nearly 10 tonnes of rubble, earth, bricks etc. from the back garden between the house and the veg garden. The wall that separates the veg beds from the rest of the garden  is 4 bricks high, and not bad for a first attempt if i do say so myself! It needs a good clean though, to get the excess mortar off. The block paving  is a mixture of blue bricks (for the table and chairs to go on) and red bricks (for the path) - all reclaimed. They have been laid on a bed of sand and the edge bricks have been concreted in - after the pic was taken to keep the whole thing in place.

All the landscaping has taken my attention slightly off the garden, which incidentally is producing an abundance of carrots, runners, the odd early parsnips, courgettes, parsley, little cherry toms and big onions! I think tomorrow will involve some planting…before i have to go back to work on Monday, and the summer disappears…

The Mrs. has created a pretty little herb garden in pots by bed 4. It consists of chives, flatleaf parsley and coriander, which are all going strong. We’ve also got curly parsley growing elsewhere, and bay, rosemary and marjoram in a window box inherited from the previous house owners. How kind!

To support the plants, we’ve tied them to wooden skewers that we had in the kitchen, and would normally cook kebabs on. They are ideal for staking floppy plants, and can be snapped to the required height. Once the plants are little bigger, we can start cutting them.

‘Successful’ Basil (the first crop didn’t like us very much and died) is the next step, along with possibly some mint…when we can find a little space!