Penellype's 2015 Edible Garden Challenge

[Penellype]

Further to the discussion on this page of the "What I did today" thread, I have decided to invent a challege for next year which is possible but is going to require some ingenuity on my part. The challenge is to eat 80 different varieties of edible plant from my house and garden (the 92 varieties in the list I posted are what I plan to grow at home and at my friend's house, and include things I don't like, such as beetroot and rocket as well as greenhouse only crops such as aubergine).

This is worded very carefully. The plants must be grown at my home address, not at my friend's house, which has a much larger vegetable garden and a greenhouse. Different varieties would be Charlotte and Desiree potatoes, but nasturtium leaves and nasturtium flowers would be one variety. The experiment runs from 1st January to 31st December 2015, and includes anything eaten fresh between those dates, so leeks and broccoli already growing will count, but courgette soup grown and frozen this summer will not. To qualify I must be able to eat some of the plant - cauliflowers which produce 4 leaves and keel over and die do not count. Lettuces that produce 4 baby leaves and then go into a salad do count. Importantly it must be me who eats it - growing things I don't like and giving them away does not count!

This thread is not just to pat myself on the back and show how clever I am - the idea is to show people what can be achieved by a mid-50s woman living alone in a very average semi detached suburban house and slightly larger than average garden. I will describe the areas of garden I have to work with and how I make the most of each. I'm lousy at DIY and have absolutely zero assistance, so this is not a thread about making do as cheaply as possible. It also means that if its not easily liftable, requires 2 pairs of hands or the use of a drill its a non starter.

I will try to work in metres, but please excuse me if I slip back to feet and inches. I'm one of the generation that had to learn metric in my teens!

[Thelma Sanders]

Good luck with that

[Penellype]

Areas Available - house and front

My house is semi detached, aligned almost exactly north-south, with the main sitting room windowsill facing west and the kitchen and landing windowsills facing south. The east facing side has only a very small windowsill as most of the light comes from a full height glass door. The bedroom windowsills are pretty much useless for plants as they are too narrow for anything of any size and face east and west. I therefore have sitting room, kitchen and landing windowsills available for tomatoes and peppers, and the small east facing one (in the utility room) for emergency overflow from the grow light garden.

My propagator and Grow Light Garden live permanently in the utility room. I use the grow lights as much as possible to start seedlings and grow salad crops indoors. I also have some home made grow lights which I set up in the spare bedroom for taller plants such as tomatoes in the spring.

Outside there are front and back gardens, but I don't grow anything edible at the front. The whole area apart from the drive is laid to lawn, which is full of tree roots from an 8ft high leylandii hedge round the north and west sides, as well as roots from an old cherry tree which has been cut down. Digging would be seriously impossible - I had the lawn re-laid a couple of years ago, and it was a case of get it as flat as you can, which is really very bumpy. I've thought of raised beds, but buying them ready made would be expensive and doing it myself is not something I want to attempt. Therefore the only area available for food to the front is about 1.4m by 0.5m of concrete between the back door and the garage. There is a slope of about 2cm lengthways, which isn't great, and although this area faces south, it is heavily shaded by the house next door, with which I share a drive. I've looked longingly at a quadgrow (1.3m long) on several occasions for this area - it would fit, but the slope (which is not consistent) would probably upset it. This year my plan is to buy 2 of the smaller chiligrow planters which have 3 7l pots each and are only about 80cm long. I think one of these will fit next to the back door, and I will try and grow some tomatoes here.

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

And I for one wish You all the very best with it! lady P

Not even got my head around next year yet!



But having big hopes! "He says" let's just get winter out of the way!

[Tripmeup]

Best of luck P..
Given what you have described so far about your set-up, you are pretty determined, so no doubt you will achieve it..

[Penellype]

Areas Available - back garden

The back garden is where the real work goes on. It is L-shaped, fitting around the (thankfully flat roofed) garage to the south. When I moved here 17 years ago the whole of the area to the side of the garage was lawn with a path along the garage side and a narrow border along the 6ft high wooden fence to the north. At the end was a raised patio with an 8-10ft high leylandii hedge behind it and another lower patio area behind the garage. This is quite big - about 5m by 3m but is heavily shaded by next door's pitched roofed garage.

Area 1 - near the house.
This is where the lawn used to be, which I have gradually dug up over the years to leave just a 10ft circle at the end. I've made a scree path between the back door and the lawn. Standing with my back to the house, the area to the right of the path is almost completely shaded except early in the morning in summer. This is where my little pond is, and contains mainly ferns and shade loving plants, with the old path along the garage side decorated with pots of hostas and shade tolerant bedding plants. Veggies would not grow here - it is dark and boggy with heavy clay soil. To the left of the path is still boggy clay soil, but at least it gets some sun. This is the area near my hotbin, and there is a useful space about 2m by 3/4m where I grew peas, broccoli and nasturtiums this year:


The glass door is just to the left of the hotbin. I like to grow flowers along the side of the scree path because they form part of the view I get from my desk when I am working.

Along the house wall is a 4ft long wooden garden seat, which will double as a strawberry bench this year.

Area 2 - The sunny bit.
This area is the other side of the weigela bush partly visible in the photo above. It is the only part of the garden that really can be described as almost full sun. I tend to grow tomatoes here:


There is also a double cordon white currant squeezed into about a square foot space, and a dwarf James Greive apple. Again there are flowers in the bed to the right as this is my view from my desk. Note the edible calendula though .

This area was heavy clay but is slightly higher and much sunnier than the hotbin area and has been double dug with masses of compost added, so it is nowhere near as boggy.

Area 3 - The veggie garden.
This area was originally patio and is higher still. The patio was removed 3 years ago and the "soil" is a mixture of sand and bits of hardcore, with some of the old patio footings still under the surface. It drains extremely quickly and can get very dry. I've added loads of compost and it grows things remarkably well:


The soil area is about 5m x 1.5m, but the archway encroaches on that and heavily shades the fence end. The path near the hedge is about 1m wide and quite shady because of the hedge. Growing things in pots here is quite a struggle.

I'll describe the patio area, which is quite complicated, in the next post.

[Penellype]

Areas Available - Patio

This is the area behind the garage, plus the end of the path that runs alongside the garage. It is made up of somewhat uneven 3ftx2ft concrete slabs and can end up standing in water in places when it rains hard, defying attempts at providing drainage. About half of this area is in deep shade all the time from next door's garage.

I've tried to make maximum use of this area by constructing 3 raised beds and also using my old wooden compost bin to house other containers including an old water butt and dustbin. The general layout can be seen from this photo:


Starting on the left, behind the pot of leeks is one of the 1m x 0.5m raised beds, which has its back to a fence and is tucked behind the end of the hedge. This gets a bit more sun that you might expect because of the gap between the fence and the garage. I grew peas here quite successfully last year and it is currently occupied by 2 huge broccoli plants and some spinach beet. There is a gap between the raised bed and the trellis fence and I grew a trough of leeks in there this year, although they haven't done all that well.

The shelving next to the trellis fence is the remains of an old blowaway greenhouse that lasted precisely one day before it blew over when I tried to use it for that purpose. I weighted it down by putting some drip trays vertically round the bottom and filling the space with soil. I have grown leeks under there (which were edible) and attempted kohlrabi, which got annihilated by caterpillars after starting off quite well. It is now planted with raspberry allgold, a yellow autumn variety, which surprisingly seems to like growing in the dark.

The 2 raised beds are in total shade all of the time. I grew a decent crop of Sarpo Mira potatoes in the left one this year, and it now contains broccoli, and the right one is planted with rhubarb red champagne. I grew potatoes in the wooden compost bin too, and the square green bin at the end holds all the rotted hotbin compost and old used compost ready for the garden. The top is flat enough to put trays of plants on if necessary.

On the right is my veggiemesh cage, which I use for carrots and brassicas. It is 1.6mx0.8m but I pull out the veggiemesh to where the black dustbin is in that photo to accomodate 4 18 inch square pots and 2 2ft long troughs. I stand these on slug and snail matting, which I use a lot under pots - its not perfect but better than nothing.

In the middle are my blueberry bushes and some other pots. I've moved the growhouse from where it was in this photo when I put up the fruit cage in summer. Next year I am going to try and squeeze the growhouse into the space the other side of the trellis on the right, which could be entertaining.

This is what it looks like later in the year:


The fruit cage is 1.6m square and there are 4 potato bags arranged around the edges. The small veggiemesh cage covered broccoli seedlings.

[Penellype]

Thanks for the words of encouragement - we shall see how things pan out.

[Bigmallly]

Good luck Pene, although I am sure you won't need any.

[Lumpy]

Pene your garden and your attitude towards it are brilliant! I'm sure your determination will make next year exactly want you want it to be.
After reading the thread I felt guilty enough to start thinking about my own growing mayhem 2015!

[KevinM67]

I'm looking forward to this. Best of Luck !!!

[Penellype]

Some intensive planning is going on behind the scenes here. One of the things I've had to decide is what I am going to allow to run over into 2015 from crops planted this year. This isn't as easy as it sounds. I have decided:

Allowed
The following are perennial plants in the garden:
Apple James Grieve
Blueberry Bluecrop
Blueberry Dixie
Currant White Versailles
Garlic chives (I think - these have virtualy disappeared)
Gooseberry Captivator
Oregano
Raspberry Allgold
Rhubarb Red Champagne
Strawberry Elsanta
Strawberry unnamed everbearer (3 years old and may get ditched)
Strawberry Malwina
Strawberry Marshmellow
Strawberry Vibrant

The following have been planted in the garden specifically for crops over winter:
Broccoli Early Purple
Cabbage Duncan
Cabbage Spring Hero
Carrot Eskimo
Carrot Nantes Frubund Fastcrop
Cauliflower All The Year Round (1 surviving plant)
Chard Bright Lights
Kohlrabi Vienna Mix
Leek Albana
Leek Oarsman
Mizuna Red Knight
Pak Choi (1 surviving plant)
Parsley plain leaved
Perpetual Spinach
Spinach Bloomsdale
Spring Onion Furio (red)

The following have been planted in the house for crops over winter:
Basil
Lettuce Salad Bowl mix
Lettuce Winter Gem
Pea Kelvedon Wonder (for pea shoots)
Provencale salad mix (komatsuna rapido, mizuna, pak choi, red mustard and rocket) - sown today
Spinach Reddy
Tomato Shirley
There are also a couple of small green peppers which may or may not survive until January - the plants are looking decidedly tired.

In addition I have 2 bags of Desiree potatoes in the garage - these have not been disturbed and have therefore not yet been harvested.

Not Allowed
Anything grown and harvested at my friend's house - I have calabrese, curled parsley, garlic, leek Musselburgh and spring onion Ramrod there.
Anything grown at my friend's house until maturity and then transplanted into my garden (I have just done this with some of the spring onions, and may bring some leeks later).
Anything grown elsewhere and brought home when mature, eg fruiting bushes etc.
Anything grown in 2014 and stored after harvesting (onions strung in the garage and tomatoes ripening in the utility room)
Anything currently in the freezer.

[Penellype]

Planning has been going on behind the scenes, and I now have at least part of the garden sorted.

Area 1, near the hotbin grew peas and nasturtiums last year. Originally my plan was to grow tomatoes here - I have done this before. However, after looking at my notes from that year, I changed my mind, because the tomatoes did much better at the sunnier, less wet end of the garden. So I will try peas here again, with any self-seeded nasturtiums (they dropped a shedload of seeds and it will be disappointing if none survive). I may fill in any gaps with some leeks, which did ok in between nasturtiums this year. I've dug this area over and fluffed up the soil, as it tends to compact and then make a lake when it rains. No doubt I will need to do it again in the spring, when I will empty some of the hotbin contents onto it. I've also put a layer of cocoashell between the pea netting and the fence as this bit was impossible to weed last year.

Area 2 - near the apple tree. I've pinched a bit more garden here . Under the weigela bush, to the left of the apple, there are some perennials, notably shasta daisies and pink geraniums, and these were spreading themselves out and in serious need of attention. I've dug them back quite a bit and there should be room for a courgette in there next year, possibly preceded by something like lettuces. To the right of the apple were tomatoes this year and I intend to plant more peas, runner beans and nasturtiums here this time. These will be the early and late peas as this area gets a good deal of sun. I've mulched this with the contents of 2 of my 18 inch square pots that housed carrots.

This means that I have to find room in the veg garden for at least 8 tomato plants, 2 courgettes and 100 onions, as well as anything else I want to grow there. Currently the growhouse is still against the fence. The plan is to move it round onto the path and grow onions here, but it might as well keep the soil warm for now. The tomatoes will go at the sunnier end - 4 Sungold in the cold frame and at least 4 other tomatoes next to them, where I had onions this year. The plus side to this is that I can use the cold frame (which has lost part of its lid) as protection for the earilest plants, along with the plastic growhouse tops - this has worked well before. The downside is that this area has grown tomatoes 2 years ago, and half of it had tomatoes in last year too. I may consider changing the soil before I plant the tomatoes. Currently the plan is to grow the courgettes next to the tomatoes, although this may prove problematical as I need to be able to step over this part of the bed when the fruit cage and rhubarb block my access to the path in the summer. The other option is to grow them to the left of the archway, but this is very shady. No doubt I will change my mind several times before I plant them out.

The next problem to sort out is the fruit cage. This is teasing me - if I do what I did last year (1.6m square by 1.8m high), I am not going to be able to cover it with veggiemesh, if I make it lower I can't walk into it, so it needs to be a different shape. Currently I am leaning towards a longer and narrower, lower version, but this may not fit with my plan to move the growhouse... Again this needs thinking through and plans will probably change several times before I make a final decision.

Meanwhile, one of the most important jobs is to keep an eye on the forecast and be ready to take the net off the veggiemesh cage. I have a feeling that we are not going to get away with no snow this year, and there are signs that things might (or might not) get rather wintery towards new year.

[FROSTYFRECKLE]

Jings oh P. You are a woman on a mission. Do you want to come up and sort out my plans for next year? I have a blank sheet of paper

[Penellype]

Might have found a solution to the fruit cage. Harrods do "storm proof" cages, which have nets which are secured by hooks that will detach from the rails in a gale. They sell the hooks separately, so I can use my original poles and hang the net from the hooks. The hooks will work with bird and butterfly netting but not with insect mesh as it is too fine, but I see no reason why I shouldn't sew loops of string at intervals onto the veggiemesh cover and hook those onto the hooks. Of course the veggiemesh may be too heavy and pull the hooks off the frame, so I will have to have a trial run with it on my lawn. That's what the lawn is for.