Wyevale Garden Centre’s Top Tips For Strong And Healthy Crops

Growing your own fruit and vegetables can be a very entertaining and rewarding process, but for beginners, the prospect of starting your own patch or allotment can be quite daunting. This shouldn’t be the case, as with the right guidance you may find that growing your own produce can be not only fairly simple, but also therapeutic. What’s more, you will end up with a yield of delicious fruits and vegetables. By following these tips you can be sure to get the best start on your crops.

Choose your produce before starting your patch
While it is not essential to base your growing space around the type of fruits and vegetables you intend on growing, this can definitely benefit the quality of your produce. Some vegetables and herbs can be grown in spaces as small as pots, such as garlic, basil, and chilli peppers. As well as being easy to grow, herbs can be bought for a reasonable price and produce a huge yield. Wyevale Garden Centres have an extensive range of herbs, as well as useful information on plant care.

Treat your soil
While each variety of plant may require different amounts of nutrients, you stand the best chance of a successful and healthy yields if you at least follow the basics. Vegetables are greedy crops, and require fertiliser at least twice annually. It is best to use slow-release products, as this will ensure nutrients are released into the soil over the course of the growing season, as opposed to all at once. Water the patch if the soil seems coarse, but it should be fine during a regular British season. Be careful of overfeeding plants, as this can be just as harmful as underfeeding.

Know your seasons
Perhaps even more important than engineering the ideal plot and soil for your plant is to choose the right season to sow the seed, and to harvest the plant. While some vegetables (mainly salad leaves) can be grown and harvested year-round, others have a very small window. Artichokes, for example, should only be planted during March and April, and then harvested in July or August. On the contrary, Brussels sprouts can be planted in the winter and through most of the spring, and are harvested when they look ready. As with any edible, its success depends on the amount of sunlight, water and nutrients it has access to, as well as the quality of the initial seed.

Wyevale Garden Centres are a UK-based garden centre chain with stores across the country. They supply a wide range of growing equipment, as well as fruit and veg seeds. For more information, visit wyevalegardencentres.co.uk

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