[Dearg Doom]

Hi everybody,
I have been lurking here for a while so have now decided to take the plunge and register.

I have decided (yet again) to try growing a few vegetables for myself.
I have tried before many times to grow my own veggies,but fell into the trap of overestimating myself, and trying to start off with a much bigger plot than I could manage properly .
So I am going to start off small with a small raised bed 4'x5' and try to grow some onions,carrots and lettuce and hopefully some garlic later on, but we will see how it goes!

Wish me luck!

Pat

[Greengage]

Best of luck and welcome ask any questions you want here, fairly friendly bunch all experts

[Blowin]

Why the raised bed? Is your core soil hopeless?

[Good guy]

It's good to see another 'forumite' getting active. I do hope your new growing venture works well. Try to locate your bed somewhere you will see it or pass by it regularly.
I've found that gardening for vegetables and salads is mostly a matter of "little and often", in that most tasks might not take long but if they are ignored the consequences can be dire. So it helps to have your beds where you will quickly notice what needs to be done.

[AlanFletcher]

Well pa
I have already started my garlic in pots and it is well on its way now ☺.
When i was at my local garden centre i was advised to keep garlic plants in big pots in my greenhouse or in a warm sunny area so i would advise you to do the same 😃. Also if you like cucumbers now is the time to start the seeds. They also grow well in a large pot and produce much nicer cucumbers than store bought ones .

Best of luck
Alan Fletcher

[Greengage]

Any Pics of the produce

[AlanFletcher]

Sorry Greengage no pics of last years stuff only this years seedlings
Regards Alan Fletcher

[Dearg Doom]

Thanks for the replies, I think Good guy hit the nail on the head..

[OffalyGoodLife]

Hi Dearg Doom

Looking forward to hearing how your year develops, so good luck with it.

Are you trying some non-lettuce leaves, like Rocket or Mizuna? They grow fairly quickly and add a bit of extra flavour and interest alongside lettuces in salads. Also, I'd be careful with carrots in a newly-manured bad as I've read they can fork - maybe try some short or round varieties (which are also good in salads).

[Blowin]

DD - As something of a 'newbie' on the forum you'll probably be bombarded by all the well minded citizens who want you to succeed and prosper into the future, but only you can sift through their advice and decide for yourself what's best for you.

Before investing in 'raised beds', or anything else for that matter, assess the pros and cons. Everywhere you look, gardeners on here will be looking for the Holy Grail of rot proof boards for their raised beds but, if you were to walk the soil of your area 50 years ago, would you have seen any raised beds? I very much doubt it. Did householders grow vegetables to help feed their families? Yep! So, is there really a need for raised beds? Probably not, but if that's the way you want your patch to look, go for it. It's yours after all, but think of the available space. Each bed will have a pathway round it on at least three sides and this will be permanently lost for growing in. Most gardens will develop paths between crops in any given year but one year's path will be another year's bed as crop rotation takes place. If your soil is a bit tacky, as you say, there'll be ways of lightening it or improving the drainage, if that's the cause.

You'll deduce that I'm not a raised bed fan but there are many who are. My garden is purely an exercise in productivity, not a show piece, but, as well as offering you encouragement, we all want you to avoid disappointment that might make you grass the lot over in a couple of years time. Good luck.

[Dearg Doom]

This time around I was planning on taking the easiest and hopefully most successful approach to joining the ranks of proper veg growers.
A success this time around would give me the confidence to continue on and expand next year.
I wanted to use raised beds as (amongst other things) I thought the sides would create a border to stop (or slow down there advances of )slugs and weeds etc from getting onto the growing area.
I found some old railway sleepers and sawed them in half to create sides, then nailed on heavy plastic sheeting to prevent any cresote leaking into soil.
I suppose what I have in reality is a kind of hybrid raised bed as I dug down into existing ground and built up with farmyard manure rather than using new topsoil.

I have never been successful growing veg before so if this little project works out I would aim to be more adventurous next year.
I have lots of space out at the back of the house (about half an acre) but its pretty exposed to the North and East so that would be an issue to be tackled.
Where my little bed is situated is in the most sheltered sunny part of the back garden.

OffalyGoodLife I really like your blog!

[Blowin]

Well done. You're already thinking things through but don't put yourself down. You'll always be a proper gardener, like we all are, but we have different levels of success, that's all.

Quite sensibly, you're doing your own small scale experiment and the crops you've selected shouldn't give you many problems. Keep the bed weed free but beware of pulling up the onion sets with the weeds in the early days, then at the end of summer you'll have loads of golden onions to last you through the winter.

[OffalyGoodLife]

[Dearg Doom]

So far so good, I have a few onions and garlic starting to poke through the soil

I have planted three small sycamore trees (bare roots) to divide off a section of the back garden for my little foray into self sufficiency.
Already I'm thinking of going a little bigger with the raised beds later on,and am planning on getting a couple of hens too.

I think I might be approaching a slippery slope here!

[Good guy]

It's great to hear about all your progress, Dearg Doom, well done. A word of caution about the sycamores, though: they will grow into big trees remarkably quickly and make large demands on water, light and nutrients. They also produce a heck of a lot of seeds!