Any advice on growing veg for a gardening novice?

[AnnVan]

I'm interested in growing a little bit of veg in my garden. I've never done any gardeing, and I don't have a HUGE deal of space. So can anyone advise on some relatively easy veg to grow that doesn't take up a lot of space. Just need someone to talk me through it really!

[snorkle]

I started with carrots and lettuce and runner beans and tried square foot gardening which works well if you don't have much space. The basic idea is to divide your area into square feet and plant each square foot with different numbers of plants according to how much space they need - 16 carrots (4 rows of 4); 4 lettuce (2 rows of 2); 9 onions (3 rows of 3) or just one tomato plant, etc, etc.

Best to grow what you like to eat I think, but the easiest and quickest thing to grow is radish.

[loler]

Courgettes are fantastic! I grew various things for the first time last year, some from seed some from plants. My results were;

courgettes - from seed in a large planter (next year just going to put them in a grow bag). Had 5 plants that need absolutely nothing doing to them producing veg from about june til beginging of october. So easy and the dc loved spotting the flowers.

tomatoes - from plants and seed - had 3 tomatoes in total! Got loads of green ones that just went brown and dropped off. Tried loads of things to get them to rippen just didn't work (a friend said it was lack od sun at the right time). Will probably have another go as they were easy just need some sun.

rocket - from seed in tubs - was really easy and tasted great but only lasted for a coupled of weeks.

carrots - easy but didn't get very big.

cauliflower - eatten over night by caterpillars.

lettuce - the same caterpillers had a go at them too

Butternut squash - just died when small plants

It was good fun trying!

[Takver]

Definitely second growing what you like to eat - no point growing super easy stuff that your family then don't like. I've recommended it elsewhere but anyway this book is really good for a beginner gardener.
If you like greens I would definitely grow both perpetual spinach (also called leaf beet) and also kale as both of them just grow and grow, you can pick a few leaves at a time & they will carry on for months, and also they don't mind a bit of shade (which is often a problem in small gardens).
Lettuces & salady stuff are pretty easy unless you have slugs, in which case it will probably be trashed by them.
French and runner beans are both easy but you are best off starting them in pots on a windowsill & not putting out til mid-late May. Tomatoes - depends on where you are in the country, if you are in the south east and have a sunny spot then they are easy, in the north they won't do much outdoors without a lot of tlc.

[bettythebuilder]

the weather this year didn't help at all - most of my tomatoes were in the greenhouse and they eventually ripened, the only ones that I grew outside and ripened successfully were the cherry tomato varieties, they'd be worth having a go.

Biggest success this year was mange tout, I had a few plants growing up an offcut of trellis, and got a great crop- really easy to grow from seed, and quite expensive in the shops so worth growing.

Dwarf beans were also good this year- I grew a few plants from seed, had them in a pot up a 'teepee' of canes so they didn't take up much space.

[Takver]

That's true, mange tout are great, also normal peas so long as you don't mind if your dcs eat them all straight off the plant without any ever reaching the kitchen. Go for climbing varieties though as they make loads more peas than the dwarf ones.
Was a rotten year this year for everyone I think betty, only saving grace that it wasn't quite as bad as last year, at least here (when we had standing water up to the top of the raised beds in one part of the garden).

[AnnVan]

Ok so no salady stuff for me - garden is OVERRUN with slugs (eew). Might see about a book seeing as my knowledge of gardening = absolutely zero. Thanks for the pointers though!

[bettythebuilder]

I like 'crops in pots' book www.amazon.co.uk/Crops-Pots-Container-Projects-Vegetables/dp/0600615510/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21 id=1227650035&sr=1-1 not all the combinations work if you're growing from seed, (or at least I found that this year, but as Takver says, t'was surely the weather and not my gardening 'skills' that caused problems ) but it gives some great, easy to follow ideas.

Put the book on your christmas list

[CoffeeMad]

bumped so i can find this later