Many people can be put off growing their own vegetables and fruit because of the envisaged hard physical work involved.
This article aims to show you how this can be made easier. Once you have designated an area ideally an aspect in the sun with partial shade.
Rather than dig. Mow any plant material on the surface down very low, cover the area with thick soaked cardboard (peg down if in a windy area) and surface mulch with leaves or homemade compost. This will suppress weed growth, breakdown and improve soil structure and fertility. To increase the spectrum of major and minor nutrient availability to plants add one large handful of seaweed meal per square metre. This will also aid the decomposition process and help counter surface nutrient loss in decomposing the wet cardboard weed suppressant.
Rather than planting annual vegetables I would use perennial alternatives like:
- Greens for Cooking: Seakale, Daubentons Kale, Nine Star Perennial Broccoli, Good King Henry, Turkey Rocket, Lovage, Caucasicum Spinach, Taunton Dean Kale.
- Salad Leaves and Flowers: Japanese Parsley, Garden Sorrel, Buckler Leaved Sorrel, Wild Rocket, Sweet Cicely, Golden Saxifrage.
- Onions, Leek and Garlic: Tree Onion, Welch Onion, Babington Leek, Wild Garlic (Allium ursinium).
- Root Vegetables: Skirret, Chinese Artichokes, Jerusalem Artichoke.
You can also grow perennial soft fruit like raspberries, blackcurrants, and strawberries.
If you purchase bare root plants you can slit trench them in straight through the mulch weed suppressant.
If you grow from seed, put seed in modules on your windowsill etc, grow on until the plants develop a strong rootball then slit trench through the mulch suppressant.
Slit trench means, use a spade to chop through the weed suppressant-soaked cardboard, move the spade back and forward creating a slit to slide the perennial vegetable root ball into, then gentler push to get good contact between ground soil and rootball. Once all planting is done water in. Initially, you may get weed material trying to come through the slit created, so just pull this out while the perennial vegetables are starting to get a hold. Once they begin to grow bushy and densely, they will suppress most weed material.
If you have an issue with ground elder, couch grass or bindweed you may have to leave perennial vegetable planting for two years and add further wet cardboard together with 7.5cm of garden compost (weed free) and/or leafmould ideally composted down. This will enable you to grow salad crops like giant mustard, mizuna, mibuna, cut and come lettuce, corn salad, purslane for the first two years before planting perennials. This means the perennial weeds will not have opportunities to predate the ground above the thicker mulch line as there is no slit trenching happening. You could seed the margins with yellow rattle or ideally grow in modules and plant.
You could also scatter Love in the Mist, Poached Egg plant (hardy annuals). These will make the area more aesthetically pleasing and attract pollinators and predator insects.
Happy soft fruit, vegetable growing!