Starting my own veggie patch! Help! Beginner!

[littlenutegg]

Hello!

I move into a new home next week. They already have a fig tree in the garden which they are leaving and I love figs! So I'm happy about that.

But they also have raised beds and I've always wanted to grow my own veggies!

Please can I have some tips and starter advice?

Ideally would like to grow:

Potatoes
Onions
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Courgette
Spring onions
Some kind of green beans...
Parsnips
Carrots

Just your bog standard stuff really! But I've never grown anything! No idea when to sow etc. Read so much online but just want a direct plan!

Thank you so much! Xx

So it's the wrong time of year for starting a garden really but that's good in a way, as you can get everything sorted ready for next season! I'd start with getting a packet of seeds of all the crops you want to grow, and they'll give you good time frames, as different varieties want slightly different sowing times etc. Suttons Seeds or Thompson and Morgan might be good places to start. I personally much prefer getting fun varieties that you can't get easily in shops, for example yellow cherry tomatoes, as they're no harder to grow but feel a lot more special!

When you move in, look at each of the beds and work out which ones get the most sun and the most shelter, as different crops prefer different levels of light and need different levels of protection from the wind.

I've always found carrots and parsnips very difficult to get to a decent size, but tomatoes and cucumbers are good for beginners so should provide a decent crop.

Above all, enjoy! And enjoy your fig tree; ours had a good year for the first time this summer and it was such a treat.

Potatoes take up a lot of room, we grow ours on potato bags. You can plant ‘earlier’ now and harvest them around Christmas. Spring onions are an easy crop. I have just sown my last crop, hoping they mature before the frost.
Over the winter we put prepared manure ( commercial, in bags) on the soil and let the worms work it in. It’s always best to grow what you like eating, so over the winter research and plant what you are going to grow. Courgettes, beans, peas, lettuce and beetroot are an easy start.
I grow my carrots in very large pots, it avoids carrot saw fly, and we harvest them when small.

So in your shoes I would spend the winter preparing lovely rich compost for your beds. Buy a composer, fill it with veg peelings (no cooked and no processed foods) and get the rotting process started so you can feed next year's veg. As pp has said you can kick-start things by putting a manure mulch down and the worms will work it in over the winter ready for next spring.
Some things to think about...
Observe the beds: which are in sunny spots and which are more shady? Use your observation to start to plan where you will put your crops.

Don't go over the top in the first year, keep it simple and high reward. Potatoes will take up a lot of room so I would encourage you to focus on the others in your list first.

You may need to start off a lot of your crops in small pots or seed trays indoors before they are ready to go outside next spring. They will also need a period of time to toughen up outside before they are properly planted out which is called hardening off. Don't underestimate how long this can take. Many crops will not be ready to plant out properly until early May. You can plan what order things go in so you have a steady stream of seedlings, hardening off, planting put, and produce and then turnover space for another batch.

Courgettes are fab, they do however take a huge amount of space so don't crowd them in as they will want to sprawl out.

Position plants so that they protect each other. For example lettuce will grow happily in the shade of beans, and slow to start courgettes.

It's Really all quite addictive

To paraphrase a famous election slogan: preparation, preparation, preparation. As other have said, work on your soil quality by making your own compost, and leaf mould. Rake them leaves and pile them up in an out of the way place and this time next year you'll have lovely stuff for your beds. General compost could be ready by spring.
In the meantime go begging at local equestrian centres for well rotted manure.

A compost heap of some sort is good to have as it'll get rid of all annual weeds and your veggie peelings, fruit cores etc, and also some of your paper. But it won't compost very fast over winter, so don't rely on it for spring use.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes will benefit from being sown indoors and then hardened off before planting out. The rest can be sown direct into the beds. Potatoes are grown from 'seed potatoes", ie small potatoes, rather than from seed. Onions are probably best/easiest grown from sets, ie small onions.Don't sow too many seeds of anything, as once they have turned into plants it's very hard to just throw them away, so you end up cramming too many into too small a space and nothing grows well.

You won't be sowing anything until march/April so plenty of time to plan.

And if you have to plant something (it's ok I recognise that urge!!), put some broad beans in in October so you'll have an earlier crop next year.

Buy seeds and follow the instructions on the packet.

Watching with interested, but we are starting with bare ground and havent even got raised beds as yet!

I know you didnt mention pumpkins or squash, but I saw an episode of gardeners world last month, where he grew various pumpkin types over a thick, strong trellis. It took up much less space than letting them sprawl across the ground.

This book is great for beginners.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/VeginnOneBed.html?id=xSi1DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kpp_readbutton&redirresc=y