How I did it: My back garden was (until recently) entirely concreted, the soil is heavy clay, and both water and light are starved by my neighbour's bolted Douglasii. I also WANT FLOWERS, to me they are a heart of the garden. Add to this a full time job and a busy life, and oh dear. However. However, even in the dim, on mean soil,  it can be done, just by following some basic principles.

• Use containers, use compost, use fertiliser
• Plant when you find time, don't worry about things being late
• Follow your veg calendar for inspiration but not slavishly

Lessons & tips:

• Have some covered space to keep rain off tomatoes and frost off seedlings. It doesn't have to be a greenhouse, I'm using a three-tier growhouse from Tescos Direct
• Plant pretty veg among the flowers, especially self-feeders like peas and beans
• Accept that lots of won't make it. It's annoying to start from 30 germinations and end up with three plants, but when you're away a lot of time, the pests and the conditions will wipe out all but the strongest seedlings.
• Use mulches to retain water, a mixture of sharp sand and peat free compost retains moisture and has a mild discouraging effect on slugs
• Feed and water regularly -- especially in containers.

The last thing to talk about is soil-borne parasites. Most gardens have
had pets or pests in them at some point, so there is a risk, however,
cooking your food will entirely eradicate that risk. In fact, that is
kind of the point of cooking. Food not in contact with the soil
(examples would be peas, strawberries, currants, beans) don't get
anything on them that needs cooking off. Eating the odd caterpillar or
bug won't do you any harm at all.

Resources: Lots of help:

• Sarah Raven seeds - fun varieties and a good sowing calendar
• Jiffy propagater - get things started early and watch the seeds go bouff! on your windowsill
• Gardman growhouse - more space than a coldframe and good for overwintering mini tender fruit trees

Also useful:

• An organiser seed box divided into months, saves you having to look for those carrot seeds
• Tomorite, my liquid fertiliser of choice, good for everything, not just tomatoes
• Unwins seeds, very reliable germination

Little or no use:

• Nemaslug organic slug control. I still had slugs, I still had lots of slugs.
• Mixed bag of three veg growing bags - they were far too small, and dried out too fast, providing all the disadvantages of containers and none of the advantages. They were also expensive for the amount of growing space. An Ikea blue bag would give you as much growing space as all three bags.

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Jun 26, 2010, 02:14AM PDT | 1 comment | 2 cheers