Beginner-friendly fruit and veg ideas for children in a difficult garden

[Homebirdy]

Afternoon!

Let me start by painting you a good picture of me:

• Im prone to forgetting to top up the water in my vases flowers in my home.. let alone going outside to water plants.
• Everything potted plant I’ve owned as died, quickly.
• I don’t know how to garden.
• I'm scared of creepy crawlies

great, right?

anyway, I have two wonderful children who would love nothing more than to grow some veggies/fruit in the garden that they can pick and eat/cook with me.

I’m thinking simple things like strawberries, peas, tomatoes. I say simple, but I have no idea what’s good to grow and what isn’t.. no idea on timings ect.

I need some of you good people to give me some very basic instructions on how to achieve my kids little veggie patches in my garden.. which is a new build and has therefore a fecking terrible garden full of clay and crap.. and is on an infeasible incline.

the only thing I can think to get around the above, on a budget because we are poor as feck is to find some cheap, better yet free raised borders/planters and fill them with some form of veggie-appropriate compost (is that a thing?)

Am I on the right lines? Please tell me how to grow food (never imagined myself using that sentence, I’m not even an iPad kid, I just don’t get out enough)

thank you, love you 🫶

Buy a builders bag of topsoil, it's cheaper than compost. For your raised beds, use floor boards or scaffolding boards screwed together into a lump of 2x2 in each corner to make a square/rectangle. (Google for how to do this) Don't put a base in (will reduce the need to water if there's no base). Then fill with topsoil.

Or just ditch the idea of raised beds and dig out a bed of your clay newbuild garden and top up with topsoil.

Easy things to grow...
Raspberries (grow against a fence with some chicken wire stapled on to give them support)
Peas (will also need support to grow up eg bamboo cane teepee with horizontal string. need netting to stop them being eaten by pigeons)
French beans, runner beans, broad beans. (will need bamboo teepee support to grow up)
Beatroot
Lettuce
Raddish
Strawberries

You're a bit late in the year to start growing peas, beans, tomatoes from seed (much cheaper than buying plants)
But you can buy raspberries as bare roots in the autumn and they'll fruit next year. For seeds you can try now... Lettuce or similar salad leaves and radish grow in a few weeks.
What about planting a fruit tree or two, away from the house? Check the that the root stock means it won't grow into a beast. Cherry, or plum or apple would be lovely

Before you do anything, figure out which way your garden faces and where gets the sun/shade. You'll not stand a chance if you put your veg pot in permanent shade!

Cut'n'come again salads.
Radish
Strawberries
Blueberries (a bit late in the year - get one early next spring)
Perpetual spinach
Swiss chard

I would personally be wary of raised beds, they can act a bit like pots and therefore dry out more quickly. Also compost costs a bloody fortune and you will need more than you think.

I would just mark out a bit of soil as an 'allotment', add any top soil you can get your hands on on top of it as a mulch (ie don't dig it in, just put on top and level it out a bit), then plant straight into it.

Salad and radishes in particular are quick growing but a lot of kids don't like them. Rhubarb is very easy and looks after itself, but you'll not be able to pick any this year (it has to establish itself). I find raspberries the easiest, in particular the autumn fruiting ones. They look after themselves, very tough, and you just chop them right down in the winter when they're done.

What do your kids actually like to eat, fruit and veg wise?

As my name suggests, I grow everything in various sized pots. if you look of Facebook marketplace there’s always someone having a clear out of pots cheap or free.

Strawberries do well in a hanging basket or fairly big pot.
Potatoes are easy, just plant and keep covering with dirt when you see the shoots. Plus they’re fun to harvest as you have to dig them up.
We also had a lot of success last year with mini cucumber plant I rescued from the cheap shelf in B&Q. Tied it to a bamboo pole and just watched it grow.
DC quite often went in the garden to play and came back with strawberries and a cucumbers

Also, not exactly what you asked for but don’t rule out flowers. Growing and picking flowers is a lot more fun when you’re little.

Direct the kids to throw water on the plants if there’s no rain for a few days. They love doing that and you can do it properly while you’re helping.

Strawberries in a hanging basket sounds like a great idea, mine always got eaten by slugs.

Tomatoes are easy you might find some reduced ones or cheap onfacebook

Strawberries pretty much grow themselves (my lawn was at one point more strawberry than grass). Mine get eaten by birds, though, so you might want to cover them with nets. The other things that are hard to stop growing are mint and parsley.

Definitely start with tomatoes even now, just buy some from a garden centre. They will grow in most soils full sun. Tomato feed, this feeds anything.
strawberry plants also grow in most soils. Also full sun or part shade.

My son has bought a few plastic raised planters.
He is growing courgettes, broad beans, tomatoes, chard and spinach.
Tomatoes require a bit more attention, but the others just need watering and hardly any effort.

Thanks everyone. Loving some of these ideas! The strawberries in hanging baskets sounds really cute to look at too!

I also read attaching some gutter to your fences off ground for strawberries helps avoid slugs, and I could put them low enough that the kids can still be involved in the process.

I prefer the idea of just putting some compost down without a raised bed! I wasn’t sure how deep it would need to be because I can’t imagine anything could get through he ground we have right now.. the grass barely grows as it is.

Buy a veg trug!

The best sort of plants that survive without being watered as much can include one's from hotter climates.
There are ones suitable for the weather here as well - Plants like lavender, sage, thyme, or rosemary which you can probably get for £1 each in pots from the supermarket.
Luckily for you those sort of plants are best for clay soil. Search for plants that are best for clay soil that you don't need to water yourself much

Plants will get diseases and eaten by insects if they are unhealthy/deficient plants. You really need the right sort of plants for your sort of soil and the right sort of soil for your plant.
Any sort of fruit plant prefers acidic soil. Horse manure is acidic and can create an acidic compost.
Some plants need well drained soil and don't like soaking in wet compost.

You are meant to feed plants as well as watering them. You can use things like coffee grounds, hay, and bags of well rotted horse manure.
If you can be bothered, you can make your own compost with scraps of fruit and veg, but you will need to find and collect things like old twigs from trees and their leaves to add to it.
Buying enough compost to fill boarders and beds is going to cost several hundred of pounds, at least. You could plant directly in the ground if you get the right sort of plants, or use pots.
My friends are growing loads of strawberries in trays attached to their fence.

Plants you get in pots are really supposed to be re-potted. They likely died because of unsuitable soil for that plant, you didn't feed them, the pot wasn't big enough, or it was the wrong sort of weather. Some plants prefer being in shady, cold, or sunny places, it needs to be the right season for the sort of plant, and some are best as house plants.

Raspberries are the easiest from any cheap place like supermarkets, they send out runners and 3 have become 20, they even pop up in next doors🤭 not had much luck with strawberries as slugs get them and only get a few berries per plant whereas get kilos from the raspberries once established and easy to pick for the children.