Heart beets
Feel happy, healthy and a little bit smug by planning your own veg patch now and soon you will be digging into tasty homegrown grub
Starting a veggie plot is one of the healthiest things you can do – giving you a full body workout and a mountain of nutritious food for the family.
Planning your garden now means you’ll be one step ahead when growing season kicks in.
Start by finding yourself a handy veg planner. I have one on my website
daviddomoney.com, with month by month planting recommendations that you can download for free.
You can also search for garden planning software that allows you to plot in detail with just a few clicks of the mouse.
There’s nothing better than choosing what to have for tea from your homegrown buffet.
My go-to favourites include sowing beetroot in March, ready for June summer salads.
I also love having root vegetables to carve out over Halloween or cook into delicious stews.
For this, I will sow butternut squash and pumpkin seeds on their side during May, once all danger of frost has passed.
Plant two seeds together, 5cm deep, and they will be ready for you in time for autumn.
A well-organised veggie patch makes harvesting a real joy. Try planting in straight lines and labelling to help you remember what you have got in the ground.
Divide your plot into veg families such as brassicas, for leafy greens like broccoli, legumes, for peas and lentils, roots for things like carrots and, finally, potatoes.
These families are then sown in different areas to help with crop rotation, which is a process where crop families are moved each year.
Moving helps soil fertility by balancing nutrients taken from the soil over time. Rotating crops also protects against recurrent diseases because each veg family gives something different to the soil.
Most crops are grown annually and resown each year but perennial crops, such as asparagus and rhubarb, will reappear in the same spot so don’t need to be included in the rotation.
For plots with three veg groups, you will need a three-year plan. Make a note of where you put them and when you are into year two, sow annuals over by one place. Repeat in the third year so each section has housed all the veg groups.
Brassicas prefer following legumes in the rotation because they enrich the soil with nitrogen, something that brassicas love.
With a yearly plan in place, work from the ground up – healthy soil will make for a happy harvest.
Give your soil a boost by digging in
A well-organised veggie patch makes harvesting a real joy
compost and organic matter like manure and aerating with a fork to give the micro-organisms some TLC.
I’d recommend taking this time to identify your garden soil. Clay soil takes longer to warm up, making early crops fiddly but later ones plentiful.
It’s also a good opportunity to work out the right crop spacing, which is needed for air circulation and spread.
Measuring out spacing can be done using your trowel as a ruler because the metal section is usually 12-20cm long and can be used as a guide.
I also use a felt tip to mark out measurements on the back of my spade’s handle, so I have a ruler ready. Most seed packets suggest the spacing on the back of the packet but for working out what is needed between two different veggies, add up each of their requirements and divide by two.
For instance, if you are situating peas, which need 80cm, next to leeks, which need 30cm, their combined space is 110cm. When halved, it means you would leave 55cm between them. Easy peasy.
If you are raring to go, top crops for planting now include sets of garlic, onions or shallots – try the ‘Golden Gourmet’ variety for a July harvest. As we head into February you can get stuck in with sowing radishes, baby carrots and parsnip varieties such as ‘Palace F1’.
Newly sown crops are tender so use cloches, fleeces or wraps as frost protection. Mulch can be an effective way to prevent soil damage caused by heavy rainfall.
Then, once you are prepared for the weather, it’s ready, set, sow!
As your confidence grows throughout the year, aim to stagger planting to enjoy an endless supply of goodies. This is called succession planting. Establishing catch-crops is another way to increase yield and it is a fab space saver.
This works by planting two crops in the same space but with one growing quicker, so they don’t clash.
You can do this with peas or parsnips as slow growers, and speedy salad crops such as spinach or radishes sown on top as a catch crop, ready in as little as three weeks.
For a year of health, happiness and horticulture, simply follow these simple tips. You will soon have a bounty of nutritious homegrown veg providing that all-important boost you’ve been looking for.