Practical Gardening
FOR many years probably the single most annually made gardening promise to oneself is ‘I must start a vegetable garden this year’ or as I prefer the more inclusive term kitchen garden. An admirable promise. Probably the single most annual reason for failure to achieve your much vaunted kitchen garden is dreaming too big. Nothing wrong with big dreams again admirable but a dose of reality needs to be sprinkled on these dreams to bring them to reality. While you can create a low maintenance ornamental garden, low maintenance not no maintenance, a low maintenance kitchen garden is impossible.
The first problem is in the term ‘ kitchen garden’, garden suggests a sizable area. Unless you are really committed let’s forget that and I would suggest that even if you are really committed you should still forget that. Year one can develop into year two and three and bigger and better, don’t let year one develop into the only one year.
In my opinion a two metre square is quite enough area to start with for growing vegetables for the novice kitchen gardener. And that’s the key with not just gardening but most things in life, a little sucess and achievement encourages enjoyment, satisfaction and fulfillment. Which should be one of the reasons you are growing your own food and you might, given a little time and practice, even get quite good at it. If you are veg growing to save money you won’t do it but you can try to grow organically and eat the freshest food available. So whether you open up a small patch of lawn, create a raised bed or grow in pots and containers start small, a practice year, and see how it goes.
Once you have accepted that you will be growing on a small scale to begin with decide on your location. All kitchen crops like good quality soil that isn’t overly wet in a sunny sheltered spot. If growing in an area of existing grass it is better to strip this off first. The arising sods of turf can be turned upside down on your compost heap. Then dig this area over incorporating plenty of organic