Turning what was a flower bed (littered with bulbs) into a veggie patch. Any help much apprecaited! With Pics.

[navyeyelasH]

Ok my garden looked like this in May it is an L shape and this is the part that goes around the corner.

This is what is looked like in October.

Just in front of the crazily painted summer house there are 2 flower beds and I want to change them into veggie beds. I am pretty sure I have clay soil and I'm testing the soil this afternoon with a kit.

So I pulled up all the flowers and dug out all the bulbs and now the beds look like this img683.imageshack.us/img683/1382/20100128165449.jpg there are still loads of roots lefts in the soil - do I have to get all of these out? Most are brown some are white. There were a few not very bad weeds in the soil, those little ones that come with the sun. No really bad ones. Close up of soil here not a very pic I'm afradi as it was dark and now camera is not working!

I have got some strultch, I'm planning on double digging the beds and putting some strultch over the top and covering the bed with fine net to stop the cats using it as a toilet. Is that right?

In these one of the beds I would like to grow, potatoes (1/3rd?), runner beans, sweetcorn and pumpking (1/3rd) and Broccolli.

In the other bed I want to plant loads of the same flower, those ones you get in pizza Express that look like daises?

In pots I would like to grow, carrots, cucumbers (?), chillis, raspberries & strawberries.

Does this sound realistic do you think? I'm a novice but I have plenty of time to spare and working at home with children who will be encouraged to help out in the garden.

Does this sound realistic? And is there one bed that would be better for the veg and one that would be better for the flowers (given the corn and peas will create a shadow).

Our garden is West facing and the bed with the tree in it gets the most light and is also slightly bigger.

Any help much appreciated, sorry for the essay!!

sorry i haven't worked out how to do links. i found this site really useful www.allotment.org.uk/

Well done already - it's looking really good since your last post, and you've clearly got your head round important things like the level of shade!

So, you'd like to grow potatoes, runner beans, sweetcorn, pumpkins and broccoli. And it's the raised bed in the pictures that you want to grow them in?

I wouldn't bother about double digging your beds - they look pretty good already in the pictures, and it's a lot of work. I'd stick with plans to lightly dig in well-rotted manure / compost in instead. I wouldn't worry too much about the roots either - pull them out as they sprout instead.

Now, the raised bed doesn't look very big for all the particular varieties of veg you'd like to grow - they're mainly things that take up quite a lot of space.

Here's a picture of a couple of my beds to demonstrate how much space pumpkins and sweetcorn can take up - because sweetcorn need a certain amount of space between each one, and pumpkins are potentially just enormous unless you grow them up a trellis.

bit.ly/aA3t0h

As you can see, I've got the squash growing through the sweetcorn to some extent, but it escaped the bed and grew all over the lawn - which may not be much fun for the kids trying to get their tricycles round your garden.

You could measure up how big your bed is, and then plot on a piece of paper how many plants you can actually fit in at the recommended spacing. You might decide to rethink the pumpkin, and maybe even the sweetcorn. But, having said that, it's more important just to have fun this first year and try out growing things. Not everything will work, but you won't know until you try. It's more expensive, but I'd be tempted to buy at least some things as plug plants - this kind of thing
www.dobies.co.uk/Shop/Vegetable+Plants/Early+Planting+Veg+Plant+Collection+443251.htm That way you know that you're going to get your plants started, rather than growing everything from seed and being disappointed if they don't germinate.

I think that the flowers you want are white marguerites - this kind of thing:
www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/perennials/anthemis-tinctoria-e.c.-buxton/classid.2485/

Both the marguerites and the veg prefer sun, so it's up to you which you decide to put in the shadier bed!