Someone please explain soil and planting techniques to me!!

[Zebraa]

Basically I have spent the last few days reading up on planting my own veg plot. Have a little patch in the garden I can use but as we're moving in Summer I wanted to plant in pots so I can take it all with us.

I have discovered that no sowing needs to take place for a month or so yet, however, what soil do I need and what do I do with it? I keep reading about warming up soil and cultivating it! Help!

Oh, I am hoping to grow:-

Rocket
Garlic
Basil
Chives
Tomatoes
Peppers

Well, as many of those as I can...

[PuzzleRocks]

Bumping for you.

[snorkle]

Best to start tomato and pepper seeds off in a multipurpose compost in small pots and move them to bigger pots or growbags with 'growbag' compost in later. Tomatos & peppers like to have the right balance of Nitrogen, Phosphorus & Potassium in the soil & will do best in compost designed for them. If you mix in ordinary garden soil they won't do so well with their roots in a confined space (it's fine if they aren't in containers though).

For the herbs, I'd grow them directly in 3 or 4" pots, either with multipurpose compost or you could mix in up to 50% garden soil with that I should think. You could either leave them in that size of pot or move them to bigger ones when established.

For the garlic, I reckon you should sow in a fairly largish (& quite deep) pot in a mix of soil and compost. I really wouldn't try to repot these into bigger pots as they grow - I've a hunch they wouldn't like it.

Garlic you could sow now and outdoors. Wait a bit for the others - you will need to start them off indoors and only let the toms and peppers outside once absolutely all risk of frost is passed (usually end of May/early June) and you will need to 'harden them off' first too.

[Wizzska]

Cultivating soil basically means digging it over, perhaps adding organic matter (compost or such like) removing weeds. You can warm up the soil by putting a layer of horticultural fleece over it, but I wouldn't bother. As long as it isn't really frosty where you live and as long as you don't want to force a really early crop I'm sure you'll be ok.

[boccadellaverita]

Also, if you are growing shallow-rooted things (like most herbs) in very big pots, you can economise on compost by part-filling the pots with crocks (which are good for drainage anyway) or broken-up polystyrene packing material. Most annual crops - not carrots or tomatoes - only need about 6 inches of compost.

[Wizzska]

Zebraa - I've planted potatoes in bins before and been very successful. You can buy seed potatoes and start chitting your early crop potatoes now (put them on window sill for their sprouty bits to grow, encourage 1 or 2 sprouty bits to form by cutting off the smaller bits).