Is it too late to start growing veg this year? (Very late May)

[FatAndFiftySomething]

I’ve never grown anything before. I have south facing window ledges and a bit of patio space outside, also south facing. I’m happy to buy cheap plastic pots, compost, stuff like that.

(I’m thinking of moving house in the next two years so don’t want to invest in heavy proper pots, that’s why I mentioned cheap plastic ones.) But I’m open to ideas and suggestions.

I don’t mind buying seeds or plants, I just fancied having some living thing on the go.

If it’s too late for this year, can you suggest something else? I have a few houseplants already, of the generic ‘green plant from IKEA’ type. Sometimes they live, sometimes they die 🤷‍♀️.

Oh - I grew sweet peas very successfully one year (on a window ledge) but that’s all really.

Thanks.

Grow some salads! Cut and come again varieties will keep you in salad leaves all summer, and they do well in pots.

You can plant some potatoes, green beans, courgettes, baby cucumbers…

Good luck!

I've just bought and planted runner bean plants and tomato plants. Tomatoes are good in pots or in a hanging basket(some varieties are sold as 'tumbling' specifically for baskets)

I second tomatoes, there’s loads being sold on our Facebook marketplace for about 50p a plant so worth a look on yours. I’ve just planted some garlic for the first time, not sure if it will work but just a bulb of garlic from the supermarket, sat it in a shallow bowl with a little water until the roots started growing then I popped it in an egg cup with water just out of reach to encourage the roots and I’ve just separated the cloves and put them in pots with compost. Can’t wait to see if they work.

Oh that sounds good!

So ‘come and come again’ salad, do I buy seeds? From a garden centre?

Potatoes, green beans, courgette, do I buy seeds? Don’t potatoes need very deep soil?

Tomatoes - I’m very happy to grow these as I use them a lot in cooking. Can I put them in an indoor pot with sticks to grow up?

When I said I’d never grown anything before except sweet peas, I was serious, I need talking through this!

You can buy seeds from supermarkets or a garden centre.

Now it’s late enough to sow them directly outside. Get a grow bag or fill a pot with compost, sprinkle the salad seeds on the top, scatter a couple of handfuls of compost over the top and give it a water. Put your pot/grow bag in the sun and keep the soil damp. You’ll have baby leaves in a couple of weeks. Snipping them off regularly will keep them growing.

Potatoes - get a bag of compost. Stand it on its end. Open it, and remove half the compost - put it to one side.
Roll the top of the bag down so it’s a couple of inches above the top of the soil, and bury about three seed potatoes in it.
Water them when the compost gets dry/when you remember/two or three times a week.
After a few weeks, some leaves will appear. When this happens, roll the bag up a bit, then cover the leaves with some of the compost you’ve put to one side. Keep watering.
When the leaves grow through again, repeat the process. This is called ‘earthing up’.
Eventually, the bag will be fully unrolled and full of compost.
Now you just wait, and water. Eventually flowers will appear on your potato plants. When this happens, dig about a bit, and see how big they are. New potatoes should be about the size of an egg.
To harvest, you can just tip the whole lot out! Fresh spuds!

@TheGriffle I’ve just planted some garlic for the first time, not sure if it will work but just a bulb of garlic from the supermarket...

I'm very much a beginner. Garlic is traditionally planted on the shortest day of the year and picked on the longest. I've tried it in the past, even growing over winter, and they were smaller than golf balls. I'd read that store bought it often grown abroad with different climates and this year- its really shows. I bought 2 varieties from a UK garden centre and also a bulb that started sprouting in the fridge. All planted the same week in Dec- the garden centre ones are 5x the height and width of the spindly shop ones.

OP- I was renovating a lived in a caravan for 2yrs. I grew everything in pots at the time. Runner beans, mange tout, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, aubergine, beetroot, salad leaves and more. Salad leaves and radish are fairly quick grow with seeds. I grow potatoes in bags even now, and you top the soil up the bag as they grow. Other plants, you might want to start with seedlings.

Cut and come again salad- I sometimes buy the rooted salad from the supermarket (designed to keep fresh longer) and split that into pots, it grows well.
Mint and basil will both root if supermarket fresh cut herbs are put in water, once roots show pop into pots and you should have fresh herbs for the summer if you are not too enthusiastic in how you use them.

I'd buy tomato plants at this time of year rather than growing them from seed. Herbs are nice. Choose ones you use in cooking. Bay and Rosemary are evergreen so will be nice to have over winter. Again if you buy them as plants you'll get some greenery on your patio quite quickly. Places like B&Q sell 6 small herbs as a pack pretty cheaply. Remember to water everything frequently even if they get rained on.

It’s not too late! We bought our house last year and I put off starting anything in the garden for well over a year. Now I’ve started I don’t know why I got so hung up about timings and getting it all right.

I’ve not got much in the ground because we had to do a lot of work to clear the beds and it’s a bit up in the air in our garden (we still need to do lots of house jobs out there). I’ve got potatoes thriving in a really big pot, tumbling cherry tomatoes in hanging baskets, salad leaves in a bowl pot I found in a bush when I was clearing a bed, strawberries and raspberries in pots and a herb garden in a pallet.

It’s easy to grow on a budget too! Lidl has lots of cheap gardening bits like pots and tools in the middle aisle and B&M is great for them too as well as compost. I’ve bought a lot of plug plants, small plants and seeds online because all the garden centres near us are dead expensive.

I love gardening now, it’s so therapeutic and it feels amazing to eat the stuff you grew and nurtured! The only barriers are the ones we create for ourselves.

Thank you all, especially @LunaNorth for the detailed and step by step explanations, this is* *exactly what I was looking for.

And @rrrrrreatt “The only barriers are the ones we create for ourselves.” This is not just gardening advice, this is life advice.

My pleasure! Let us know how you get on.

Warning - it’s addictive. I started with salad in a pot and now my garden and windowsills are taken over by all manner of fruit and veg in spring and summer!

I bought the "living" herbs from lidl - basil and parsley - watered very often and put on the kitchen windowsill - they're still going strong and really handy for adding to salads etc

I usually sow my own seeds but didn't this year. So I've just collected two tomato plants (Facebook marketplace) to plant out today. You could plant two in a growbag or a bucket each. They need support, either a stake in the bucket or by towing on to your balcony railing.

Salad leaves also good.

I think you're too late for potatoes.

Definitely not too late.

Libraries often have lots of good books on 'veg in a tiny garden' or 'grow your own on a balcony' subjects.

Don’t forget to sow swiss chard (spinachy thing), purple sprouting, kale to take you through the spring