growing veggies for dummies

[MerlinsBeard]

Am probably too late to start growing my own fruit and veg for this year but wondered if someone could advise me what to do.

At the moment my garden is full of thorny type things and many many weeds but we are planning to dig up a large portion of it for vegetables. My problems are: the soil is crap, very dry and lumpy (is soil replacable?), i hate gardening so want to do the minimun possible, ie sow some seeds and watch them grow, no transplanting or growing in a green house (no room for one anyway). The other problem is the sun, next door both ways have large trees which block out a lot of the sun after about 1pm ish.

so....what do i need to do to make my soil nice first of all and what is easy to grow (will be buying seeds as need to keep costs very low)

You can buy top soil but the best thing would be to dig in lots of manure.
Best things that just 'grow' IME are peas/beans (need to grow them up things but not a lot of work) and lettuce/salad leaves.
You could buy a couple of strawberry plants and let them send off runners to get more plants (but you won't get many strawberries that way)

If you want lazy growing why not do some container gardening? Great for peas, beans,potatoes, tomatoes, courgettes etc. You will have less probs with weeds and slugs this way so less maintenance. If you don't fancy doing seeds then buy young plants at your local garden centre (or B and Q if you must) and plant straight into big pots/buckets/dustbins of peat free compost or even pure well rotted manure for toms/squash. Seed pots go in a dustbin or stack of tyres in about 3 layers and then tip out for loads of yummy new pots. Do a google on 'container veg gardening' and see what comes up.
Have fun.

you can get nice tidy bags of garden compost from crocus 10 x 60litre bags are about £50. Just don't put them on your garden in a downpour as I did!

Have a look at the BBC Gardeners World site - they recommend easy, tasty veg to grow and include a section on container gardening. How about things the kids will enjoy eating?

Potatoes are easy. Buy some seed poatoes and follow the instructions. Only thing you need to do is earth them up at a certain point.

For next summer, tomatoes in grow bags up against a sunny fence / wall.

We also had success wtih courgettes (watch the slugs though).

Carrots were a disaster!

Agree on Carrots, courgettes, pumpkins, squah all grow quickly with little maintenance, tomato seeds grow well but need to do the repotting thing or buy plants (usually 40-60p round here so well worth it for the amount of toms!)

Your local allotments may well have a sale of 'spare' plants in May/June ready to plant out. Always cheap and healthy in my experience.
Agree about carrots but radishes are easy and quick if any of family eat them.

Thank you for all replies (sorry, with the other thread i forgot to check back on this one)

Container growing sounds like my kind of gardening...ie gardening ish. al;tho am also interested in a medicine garden so may have to just stop being lazy !!

lots to think of, esp the digging in manure thing.

Thank you

Get a book on vegetable gardening - either buy one or get a load from your library. There will be lots of advice about soil types and the different ways to improve different kinds. Also lots and lots about all the possible variety of vegetables you could grow and how easy they are.

If you don't have a compost heap then now is a good time to start one. I did the really easy compost heap method, which is just to make a big pile and let it sit there. Find a corner you don't want for anything else, clear about 1m square and put lots of twigs/hedge trimmings/anything woody and in small pieces on the ground. This is to make sure you can get some air at the bottom of your pile. Then just keep piling your weeds and grass clippings and kitchen waste on top and leave it alone. You can buy compost bins and make wooden frames to hold the heap and all that jazz, but this is the ultimate no-frills version and it's working for me. From your kitchen you can compost anything that comes from a plant and isn't cooked, also crushed eggshells and teabags and coffee grinds. If you start now then by the start of next summer you'll have some lovely black compost at the bottom of your pile. It's not that 'lazy' a solution but once you've started it's easy enough to keep going and it's very cheap.