Grow food for all the family
A KITCHEN GARDEN IS A FUN, HEALTHY WAY TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFESTYLE
Growing our own produce where possible is good for our health, wellbeing and environment. It helps to combat food air miles, provides us with food security and can save us money too.
A kitchen garden, however small, can provide a
household with fresh fruit and vegetables. This creates a wonderful feeling of achievement. A kitchen garden is a place where children can be educated about the natural world, growing fun crops such as beans, sunflowers and pumpkins.
Having a vegetable garden also creates an opportunity to grow foods that are not readily available in the shops — there are as many older, non-commercially viable varieties as new cultivars to try.
How and where to grow
Growing your own veg is an easy and addictive pastime. There are just a few key principles to keep in mind:
Select plants that are easy to grow. Start with crops that can be planted straight into the ground, such as potatoes, French beans and salad crops. When you have some experience, you can build up the confidence to sow from seeds in pots under glass and plant them out when frosts have passed.
If you don’t want to sow seeds, you can start with young plug plants that will be a little more expensive, but will save some time. They are readily available in garden centres now and from internet sites direct from specialist growers, where more obscure varieties can be purchased.
Plan the area in the garden you’re going to use. Make your kitchen garden into a feature of your overall garden design. Because it’s going to have to be positioned in full sun, you’ll probably see it from the house, so make sure it looks good.
Build a raised bed if your soil isn’t great or has bad drainage. Three creosote and chemicalfree sleepers built into a rectangle and filled with rich topsoil will do the job. Improve existing soil with good humus material — well-rotted manure or the contents of your compost patch.
Plan to grow unusual varieties. Carrots of different colours always capture the imagination. Did you know that orange carrots didn’t go on sale until the 17th century, when farmers in Holland worked out a way to grow them orange, to celebrate the country’s national colour? Purple carrots would go down brilliantly with kids, and bright-red vine tomatoes are fabulous for the summer months.
And use a crop rotation method. Don’t grow the same type of vegetable in the same plot year on year, to avoid pests and diseases building up in the soil. Plan to rotate groups of vegetables each year. So legumes (peas and beans), onions and root crops (beetroot, carrot and parsnip) can be grown in one section; brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, swedes and turnips) in another, and then potatoes in the other section. Next year, they all swap places.