New house, lovely but neglected garden. Inspiration?

[Lcy]

We have just moved into a new house with a lovely big but wild garden. It has a load of fruit trees and fruit bushes but in general a bit neglected I am especially interested in how to turn a bit of the garden in to a veg patch.

I need some inspiration. Do you know of any good websites or blogs?

TIA

If you type in "renovating a neglected garden" a ton of UK-based websites pop up. I'm doing up my Australian garden so can't be much help, unfortunately, though I'm finding out lots about growing in sand.:o

I do recommend raised beds for veggies, though, as it's easier to manage weeding.

What IS true, though, is that it's all in the preparation of the soil. If you get that right, everything else is easier. This does not mean digging it to hell and back, as you can lose structure by doing that.

Thanks. Good luck with the sand

Hi there - if you know what sort of fruit trees/bushes you have, you will be able to look online or in a good gardening book and see when is best to prune them. They all have different timings though so if you don't know what they are it will not hurt to go through the year and see what you have got. A tree surgeon will sort out the trees if you don't feel confident, and that will get them fruiting well again.

With the veg patch, an idea is to make raised beds. I did this in my old garden and probably will in my new one too. I got some large scaffoldling boards (you can also use reclaimed railway sleepers if you can find them) and used them to make beds approx 4' by 12' with a little gravel path in between. I filled these up with good topsoil which gets rid of any problems you might have with the type of soil in your garden. The little paths make it very easy to get to your plants, sow seeds etc and havign teh beds split up makes it much less daunting. If you don't know what to do with one or two beds then it is easy to cover them with black plastic or sow a mulch crop whilst you are deciding and it doesn't affect the rest of teh garden. It also makes crop rotation a lot easier. In preparation you will need to clear the soil of perennial weeds otherwise these will be a problem in your raised beds but then you are away.

Potatoes are a good first crop for clearing neglected areas as they are tough as old boots (until the blight gets 'em ) and their foliage shades out a lot of the annual weeds. You also break up the ground as you dig them out at harveset time.

I would also consider a small greenhouse if you are wanting to grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, aubergines etc.

Good luck and enjoy your garden!

I've been in this situation twice now. The first time, I tried with expert help to prune the fruit trees and bring them back but to be honest it didn't work so we pull them up and planted new ones. It was much quicker to get fruit. Our new garden also has old fruit trees and we are not hesitating, we are removing and replacing being careful not to put apple trees where apple trees were... It does however depend on how old the trees are. Ours are in excess of 40 years old.

I agree that potatoes are a great first crop, they help make the ground more manageable so do your vegetable plot in stages. you need 3 sections because you need to rotate your vegetables. This year just do one section and plant potatoes. Next year get a second section going and plant potatoes in that. Use the first section to plant other things.

I recommend marking out the section and not leaving raw grass edges, it helps keep down the maintenance. Either raised beds on by bedding something into the ground to create a divide. Each section would have more than one bed perhaps so that you can work from the sides and not have to stand on the soil.

If you have young children, I recommend that you give them a patch that they can dig so that they are not digging up the seeds and plants you are growing. This way they can have fun and also see the benefits of growing vegetables. As they get old they can become more involved in the process.