Getting Started in the Garden
The Summer Solstice is now well behind us and we’re looking towards the season of mellow fruitfulness and golden carpets of fallen leaves. For the folk with established gardens now is the time to enjoy the late summer sun and get the harvests in before Jack Frost returns from his summer break.
But what if you’ve only just taken on a plot? After all, many allotments become vacant in September. Or maybe you’ve got a garden but it’s just been a bit of scruffy lawn and some flower borders and you’re now thinking you’d like to grow some veggies to help stretch the food budget? Is there anything you can do this late in the year? Well, the answer is most definitely YES! Preparing a plot now has several advantages over waiting until the spring to start. The weather is often fine, the sooner you start the longer you’ve got to work on your preparations before next year and there’s also some plants that can be sneaked into the ground in the early autumn that will quite happily sit through the cold weather of mid-winter ready to burst into life next year.
The first thing to decide is how big your veggie beds are going to be and where they are going to be located. If you’re new to gardening, my toppest of top tips is to take it slowly. Don’t dig up all the garden or try to tackle all of a new allotment plot in one go. It’s far better to start small and expand as your skills and requirements develop. Far too many people are put off gardening by spending two or three days furiously digging to clear a large space, only to then take a couple of weeks’ break to recuperate and come back to find their lovely clear beds already full of fresh new weeds! Even in a small space you can grow a surprising amount of fruit and vegetables and it’s much easier to break more new ground later once you’ve got your first beds established and working with just the odd nudge in the right direction from you. Even a bed six feet (two metres) long by two feet (60cm) wide can grow an amazing range of crops and is a manageable amount of land to start with.
You also want to think about where the veg beds are going. Many vegetables prefer a sunny location, although some salad leaves will put up with a bit more shade. Therefore take a look at where you get the most sun and try to avoid siting the bed under overhanging trees or large shrubs that will have large, water-hungry roots. Sometimes you have no option but to be in the shade in the garden, and in those situations you might want to consider containers for growing sun-loving plants like tomatoes and peppers indoors on a sunny windowsill. Sitting in the garden for an hour or two in a deck chair is a great way of taking note of where the sun goes, and a nice way to spend a warm summer’s day with the excuse that you’re ‘gardening!’
When growing veg initially it’s best to aim for vegetables that you actually like and maybe that are difficult to find in the shops or expensive. For example if you don’t like beetroot, don’t bother growing it, even if there are lots of exciting, colourful varieties. You’d be amazed at how many folk end up offering most of their crop to friends and neighbours because they grow far more than they can consume (especially with prolific plants like courgettes). Plan out what sort of veggies you want to grow and see if the shops have any cheap packets of seeds – the end of the ‘gardening season’ can often result in some big reductions. Careful though: seed buying can become an addiction (just ask my girlfriend!) so make sure that you don’t buy enough for the whole street rather than just your plot!
Next you have to prepare your bed. This is where the real hard work can start, especially if you need to dig over the ground to remove nasty perennial weeds like couch grass, nettles, horseradish or docks – if that’s the case then make sure that you get a good comfortable fork and spade, and don’t overlook the benefits of a mattock for breaking up heavy ground and cutting quickly through thick roots. However, if you’re planning on turning over a flower border or section of lawn to the veg bed, or even if you are lucky enough to have a not particularly weedy allotment plot, you can cheat a bit and, er, not do any digging. Yep –that’s right: no dig gardening. The traditional view is that vegetable beds need to be dug over every year to break up the soil and incorporate organic matter. Getting organic matter into the soil is is a good idea, but the current thinking is that we can use an ally to help us do it: the humble earthworm. To get the worms going, cover your bed with a couple of layers of flattened cardboard boxes and then cover these with six inches of garden compost (either home made or bought bagged from the garden centre or DIY store) or some well-rotted farmyard manure (horse or cow poop in other words). The cardboard excludes the light from the annual weeds and lawn grasses, killing them off. It will slowly break down as it gets soaked with rain and the earthworms will soon be coming up through the soil to drag small bits of card and compost/manure down into their tunnels. In the spring you can plant straight into the compost/manure and away you go!
However, you don’t actually need to wait until the spring to get planting. Even now, in the late summer and early autumn, there are things you can look at getting in. For example you can get lettuces that will quite happily survive well into the winter if you can give them a bit of protection by placing a sheet of polythene or plastic cloche (or bottle!) over them during frosty weather. They also grow relatively quickly and can be a quick win to boost your gardening enthusiasm as it gets colder outside. Also look out for autumn onions, broad beans and over-wintering peas. You can get these growing before the storms of winter arrive and give yourself a head start in the spring.
So there’s some ideas to get you started in September. If you want more hints and tips, take a look at the September Tips in this newsletter and drop into the New House Farm gardening forum. Above all, enjoy yourself out there!
