North facing new build garden

[mysti77]

Am I doomed?

I have an approximately 9m (l) x 10m (w) north facing back garden. It was just dirt up to last week and the builders have now laid grass. We want to put a largish patio area, maybe a third of the way from the house so will have approx 6m x 10m of lawned area. The proposed patio paved area gets no sun, it's shaded by the house. The top left side of the garden gets some sun and the top right gets no sun.

I am not a great gardener, no clue what goes well where and what will even grow with such little sun but I would really like to start growing some fruit, veg and herbs to start with but with future planning in mind for when we have money to landscape with borders etc.

Will my fruit/veg/herbs be doomed as the garden is north facing? I have grown cherry tomatoes, strawberries and herbs in pots on a patio before will these fail as there is no direct sun?

Thanks!

[chris]

Hydrangea, Some roses (i've a mme alfred carrier that gets hardly ANY sun, yet is still vigorous, hardly has thorns, and repeat blooms like mad!), leafy plants, etc etc

Fruit and veg (that set fruit/roots - i.e. not salad crops) do need sunlight really..

[mysti77]

Thanks Chris,

Thanks for ideas on some plants. Salad crops I can try that's a start. I may have to plant fruit/veg on the top left with some sort of path to them and plan for shade loving plants in the rest of the garden.

[AllInContainers]

Don't panic! You might only be getting that much sun now, but soon you'll be getting more.

Last year I grew heaps of stuff in a much smaller North facing garden - in containers too! Imagine where the shadow is now, and imagine which direction it will move in towards summer and winter. Then look at when the harvest times are for the crops - stuff harvested in July/August can be in where the shadow is now (but which will be in full sun soon), but stuff harvested later needs to be where the sun is now.

Leaf crops such as salad leaves and brassicas don't want to be in full sun in summer anyway, so they'll want to be in a different place to your fruits and fruiting veg - with a little bit of head scratching now, you'll be able to have a very productive garden

[sparrow100]

I have a tiny north-facing balcony and things will grow there. Some not as well as if they were in full sun, but sorrel, rocket, carrots, parsnips, radishes, beetroot, beans have all done well. Also a the compact style chillli plants - I had 4 produce an average of 95 chillies each, all from a life less sunny.

[mysti77]

Thanks for the hope

I do remember seeing the back garden once in September and it had sun across the entire back of the garden all the way to the patio but since moving in haven't seen so much sun and figured that regardless of the season I would need full sun. But if you're saying that once I get sun during the harvest time for the crop then I think we definitely be ok with growing fruit/veg

[sparrow100]

The sun line moves more than we think season to season. I have little/no sun on my allotment from mid-Nov to mid-Feb, but that increases to full sun all day May-September. The balcony gets about 5 hours of sun in the morning in summer, it seems to be enough.

[WendyC]

Can you use your front garden at all? Our first house had a north facing, and much smaller garden than yours and I grew quite a lot there.

[AllInContainers]

My back garden has no sun whatsoever for three months - NONE! Come the height of summer when the sun reaches 60 degrees elevation instead of about 12 degrees, I get direct sunlight on all my garden for at least part of every day. I effectively "zone" my garden into different areas for different crops. If part of the garden will receive full sun on 21st August, then it will be receiving full sun from 21st April too, so there's a 4 month period where it will get good strong sun. Some areas will get more, others will get less. The time of day at which it gets sun affects crop choice too.

The sunniest areas (particularly at the hottest time of day) should be for fruits and fruiting veg, the shadier areas for leaf crops, and if you're not sure if an area is sunny enough for fruits/corn/peas, or shady enough for salad and cabbages, stick your root veg there - perfect! Obviously there is a little more to it than that, but it's a good general guide IMO

[AllInContainers]

Another quick thought on crop rotation.

People blessed with a lottie or a large garden that gets good sun, can move crops from year to year. This is necessary for certain stuff, for example you shouldn't really grows peas in the same area twice for about 4 years. However, when you are limited for what you grow and where it can make this difficult .... UNLESS you grow in containers. The reason you have to rotate crops is to stop nasties building up in the soil, but with containers you can have soil used in different places every year to facilitate rotation by simply moving the pot/planter.

I say this just so you don't dig up part of the garden for growing peas in year after year - won't work. If you want the same crops in the same places all the time due to limitations on sunlight, container gardening might be a better solution for you

[mothhawk]

Hi mysti and welcome to the vine

The main drawback I find at this time of year with a north facing garden is that the soil is colder than in a south facing garden, because it gets no sun to warm it at all. That means that I have to wait a week or two longer before direct sowing seeds than I would if it was south facing. Seeds only start to germinate when the soil they are in reaches an optimum temperature for them, so I tend to start a lot of seeds in pots or modules indoors or under cloches, so I don't lose that 2 weeks of growing time.

Gooseberries are happy in shade, and raspberries will put up with quite a lot too as long as they get the warmth on them to ripen the fruit. I grow autumn raspberries because I get most of the sun in late summer. All the leafy salad stuff prefers the cool shady places, but don't forget, slugs like it cool and shady too
You can plant squashes in the shade, 'cos they will make a dash for the sunshine anyway, so if you don't mind them sprawling over other stuff stick their feet in the cool.

[mothhawk]

you say it's a new build and the builders have laid grass. Probably on top of a thin skim of top soil which has buried all their brick ends, sandwich wrappers and sawn off timbers

Try and get as much organic stuff into the soil as you can before planting it up. It's probably worth digging it all over (unless you intend to build raised beds) just to remove all the builders rubble before you start. There's nothing worse than digging a hole to put in a plant, and finding you've got to make it a foot wider than you intended, just so you can remove that half a breeze block someone kindly hid there.

Your local council will probably have cheap bags of compost made from the green waste they collect, that you could spread and work in (or let the worms do it for you )

[mysti77]

you say it's a new build and the builders have laid grass. Probably on top of a thin skim of top soil which has buried all their brick ends, sandwich wrappers and sawn off timbers

Try and get as much organic stuff into the soil as you can before planting it up. It's probably worth digging it all over (unless you intend to build raised beds) just to remove all the builders rubble before you start. There's nothing worse than digging a hole to put in a plant, and finding you've got to make it a foot wider than you intended, just so you can remove that half a breeze block someone kindly hid there.

Your local council will probably have cheap bags of compost made from the green waste they collect, that you could spread and work in (or let the worms do it for you )

we actually got some rubble taken away that was close to the surface before the grass was laid. I complained because it looks like they didnt lay the turf properly (soil not prepared underneath) so they now need to re lay it

[out in the cold]

We are north facing in Aberdeenshire and get fairly good crops from an area 8m X 3m, so you should be fine.

Where abouts are you?

[KittyColdNose]

Oitc said what I was going to, although he missed the bit about us also being in a new build with a north facing garden

It's 9.30am and the sun is halfway up the garden, by April it will be on the patio near the house in the morning, and in high summer it shines over half the garden all day and in the late afternoon there is still enough for the sun loving veggies to be happy. We studied where the path of the sun was during the main growing season and can plant accordingly, along with careful rotation.

Be patient and prepare to rearrange things if you need to.

Welcome to the vine btw!!