new house has a garden thats a bit bare.. was thinking of planting some stuff..
im a lazy mofo tho, so after something that requires the minimalist of effort..
was thinking something like strawberrys / tomatos / or something that are actually edible rather than herbs and stuff .
anyone do a spot of gardening?
Herbs are generally edible and very easy to grow. I wouldn't be withoutOriginally Posted by RabbieBurns
rosemary ( a must-have with the roast lamb),
mint (Lamb and Pimms), but restrict the roots to stop it spreading
bay (casseroles, soups)
chives (salads)
Tomatoes do best in grow-bags unless your soil is particularly good and strawberries require guarding from birds, squirrels, slugs...
When Mme LeMarchand tells me to dig, I dig. When she tells me to chop, I chop. I am in charge of compost making and deployment, though!
Unless you are lucky and have good soil/few pests growing edibles is too much work. If it's a small garden, why not go for a "courtyard" effect with a few things in containers + something structural (water feature/sculpture etc) to take up a lot of space. Otherwise grass is pretty easy!
This has a good title, but I don't know if it's any good: Easy Gardening with the Cheap Lazy Gardener.
The ones I forgot:
If you're prepared to put some effort into digging in plenty of manure before planting, rhubarb is easy to get established and will thrive as long as you pull it regularly for eating
Fruit bushes, such as blackcurrants and raspberries are the reasonably well behaved, but you may need to erect nets to defend the fruit from the birds.
Since you're starting off and the gound is likely to be compacted I suggest getting a crop of spuds in. The digging over in preparation, the earthing up and the harvesting all reduce weed growth and open up the soil. As a bonus, potatos help fix nitrogen in the soil and taste superb when really fresh. Suggest you grow first and second earlies which will be harvested before the nasty slugs etc get really going in August.
Beans, peas beetroot and onions are also easy to grow but do need some attention to keep weeds down.
Salad crops can be grown in grow bags for best results.
guess i should update this.. bearing in mind my location, i might be able to plant a few more temperate things than neeps and tatties..
Its just a townhouse, the garden is mostly lawn, but there is flowerbeds round the edges of the lawn..
the other weekend i dug out the flowerbeds, the soil is just a mass of stones, weeds, roots etc.. Its dry and sandy...
If i dig it out deep and get a wheelbarrow and ditch all of the aforementioned, what would i fiil it up with? Just soil from B+Q equiv?
Would it be better getting those growbag things im sure ive seen?
You'll want some stones and sand to let your soil drain properly. You might want to get a sieve to get the larger chunks out, then mix in some compost. Probably better to avoid peat-based compost - you can buy worm-cast compost produced by worms, and it might be worth looking at a wormary to compost down your kitchen scraps. You could replace the flower beds with raised beds - bit of extra effort to get set up, of course, but lets you garden at waist-height from then on. Old railway sleepers make decent raised beds (actually, I think B&Q and similar now sell new sleepers as the supply of old ones has been used up by people doing up their garden), or you could try used tyres stuffed with soil.
ill take some photos tomorrow to let you all see what im working with, bear in mind its an inner-city townhouse garden...
im worried if i put railway sleepers down the 9:18 from Cental would come thunfering through..
Those old Victorian-era terraced houses were designed with the idea that you could grow some vegetables and keep a few chickens or rabbits in the back garden, along with your outhouse and coal-store. As most people have indoor toilets and central heating these days, the gardens tend to actually be quite spacious, if in a rather long-and-thin kind of way. I don't know if that's what your garden is like, it might just be short-and-thin. Eggloo sell dinky two-hen henhouses designed to work well in an urban garden - you could have fresh eggs for breakfast every morning!
when was the victorians stuff.. i dont know any history, im scottish, but considering they only started sending convicts here about 3 generations ago...
there are pleanty of houses here, especially in the inner city, that still have outdoor lavvies...
the garden is about 3meteres 3 metres, with about an 0.8x .08 lawn patch in the middle
ill take some picutres tomorrow!
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