An Introduction To Vegetable Gardens

A good vegetable garden should be sheltered from prevailing winds as they will affect your pollinators. Your soil should be about 45cms deep and of good quality. A combination of clay and sand is perfect, the former retaining water, the latter allowing it to drain. Your soil must also be free of stones.

All fruit and veg should be protected from frost, so make sure you don't locate it in a hollow.

If the local soil is poor, then try building up in some raised beds constructed from wood. You can have shallow beds, or deep troughs, and they should be square or narrow so they can be worked from all sides. Raised beds are particularly suitable for root crops such as parsnips, carrots, and beetroot, which can all split when hitting clay.

Always keep like minded plants together according to the care they require, and the pests and diseases they suffer from. For example, Brassicas should be grouped together, as should Legumes, where as the likes of potatoes and corn should be planted by themselves as they take up so much space.

In addition to this, you should practise good crop rotation from year to year. Where legumes are planted one year, plant nitrogen lovers such as Brassicas the next. This improves both the strength of the plant, and the soil.

You should maximise your use of space. Combine long term crops such as cabbages and sweetcorn, with low growing crops such as courgettes at the base. This keeps moisture in the soil and utilises the space effectively.

Do not forget that along with fruit and veg, you can grow edible flowers such as Nasturtium and Tagetes to garnish salads.

A good fruit garden should include fruit trees and soft fruits such as blackberries, raspberries, and gooseberries. As with vegetables, fruit needs a sunny southerly aspect which is sheltered and frost free. Most fruits are early flowering so suffer frost badly. The soil should be a good depth of at least 60cms for trees, and make sure these do not overshadow other, lower plants.

If you garden is small or only average sized, you should only plant trees from a dwarfing root stock. The M27 root stock of Cox's pippins for example (available from garden centers) won't grow higher than 1.5 metres, which both makes picking easier and saves space.