Building the Kitchen Garden from the Ground Up

Steve Morgan — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:14:00 GMT

I’ve only got a small(ish) garden. Given the proportion of it that I can get away with using for my kitchen gardening adventure without suffering first-hand the full wrath of my wife, I need to set my sights on maximising my use of the available space.

I’m trying a couple of different approaches.

I’m going to grow some stuff in containers, primarily on the patio (oh, yes, we have a patio). I’m going to grow some potatoes, so I’ve bought a couple of potato barrels, a plastic bin and some potato patio planters. They're only really suitable for first earlies, but I'll see how I get on. I’m also going to try some runner beans in a container on the patio, too.

I’m going to try a few varieties of tomatoes this year, including a bushy one which I think I’m going to grow in a hanging basket.

But the most adventurous thing I’m going to try is called “Square Foot Gardening” in an 8’x4’ raised bed. Square Foot Gardening is the brainchild of an American chap called Mel Bartholomew who’s written a couple of books on the subject. I recently bought one.

The idea behind Square Foot Gardening is that by planting in discrete one square foot units within a raised bed, you can dispense with traditional rows along with the wide aisles than necessarily separate them allowing you to grow your produce in a space around 20% of the traditionally required size. Sounds potentially useful, if it’s at all true. Of course, in Blighty, we’re not used to having acres of space so it may be that we’re not typically as liberal with our spacing so the overall increase in efficiency may not be so great.

Another major aspect of Mel’s method is that the growing medium is primarily bought-in (the infamous Mel’s Mix). No digging organic matter into your soil for years to build a good quality, fertile loam. No, Square Foot Gardening uses out-of-the-bag goodness from day 1. Consequently, it’s ruddy expensive!

The first step, then, has been to build my raised bed. Here, for once, was the opportunity to save some money. Raised bed kits are uncomfortably expensive. Particularly if you want a decent sized one. However, my extensive research identified an alternative. I made one myself using scrap scaffold planks. Scaffold planks, you see, are strong and robust. They have to be, because they have burly builders bouncing along them with their brick-filled hods on a daily basis. Eventually, though, the boards succumb to the excesses of an over-laden hod (or builder) and start splitting or otherwise degrade. That’s a big no-no for the Health and Safety Executive, for we can’t risk being crushed by falling burly builders. So the companies that hire out scaffolding have to scrap their unusable scaffold planks. And that’s where we come in. A quick visit to one of my local scaffold hire centres revealed a big pile of perfectly usable planks in a variety of lengths up to 13’. They’re a standard width (9”) and thickness (1.5”) and as long as you avoid ones with major splits, are absolutely perfect for making raised beds. I bought four for the princely sum of £1.25 each. Transporting four 13’ scaffold planks can be a challenge but fortunately, my Land Rover’s got a good sturdy roof rack so I strapped them securely to it and ventured home.

Construction was simple enough. I cut the boards into 4x8’ lengths and 4x4’ lengths, found a couple of old wooden posts to brace the corners and screwed them together to form an open box 8’ long, 4’ wide and 18” deep. That’s significantly deeper than Mel suggests in necessary but my garden’s on a bit of a slope so at the top-end, there’s only 9” sticking up out of the ground.

I sprayed it with some dubious green fence protector (I’m looking forward to it weathering a little). To make it easier, I also bought a battery powered sprayer, designed specifically for the job. Hmm. Another waste of time and money. It has a tendency to clog because the liquid is actually fairly thick. Consequently, you spend quite a lot of time trying to unblock the spray nozzle. I should have just bought a £1.50 roller and rolled it on. Never mind. Another valuable lesson learned.

So now my box is made and I’ve put it in place. I had to dig it down into the ground at the top end because of the slope, but that was no more than half an hour’s work.

Now, it’s ready to fill with growing medium. That’s a good reason for sticking to Mel’s original dimensions. An 18” deep bed requires three times the amount of material than his recommended 6” deep bed. 48 cubic feet or over 1300 litres of the stuff to be more precise.

Now, Mel’s mix comprises 1/3rd multipurpose compost, 1/3rd vermiculite (a blown mica rock which is lightweight and absorbent) and 1/3rd peat moss. Ah, peat. There’s a problem. Using peat isn’t very environmentally responsible as it’s taken an awfully long time to produce. Apparently, peat beds increase in size by approximately 1mm per year. Not very sustainable, in the volumes that it’s removed. So, I decided that I’d deviate from Mel’s advice and use multipurpose compost and vermiculite.

You can buy vermiculite from garden centres. If you’re mad. My local B&Q charged around £5 for a 10 litre bag. Scale that up to the 400-odd litres that Mel’s mix demands for my size of bed and you’re looking at £200 for vermiculite alone.

Fortunately, vermiculite has many uses. A major one is as loft insulation. A quick visit to my local branch of Travis Perkins (the builders merchant) revealed 80 litre bags of the stuff for £9.50 (+ VAT). I bought 240 litres for an all-in cost of around £43. Now, that’s still relatively expensive. I’m sure you can get it even cheaper elsewhere. It’s also nowhere near the 400 litres that my bed is supposed to have. But it’ll do for now. I may buy another bag or two if I think it warrants it sometime in the future.

Now for the compost. I found 125 litre bags of multipurpose compost at B&Q for £6.98 a bag. Four of those in the boot of the car at once was plenty, so that’s 500 litres. I then popped to a local garden centre and found their multipurpose compost on a 3-for-2 offer coming in at a total of £9.98 for 225 litres. So I bought some of that, too.

It was then that I had something of a nasty surprise that leaves me feeling socially uncomfortable. Only when I’d emptied the compost from B&Q out did I notice the fact that it’s peat-based. So, already I’ve failed in my attempt and being a responsible gardener through a lack of attention to detail. My bed now has peat in it, which may be what was originally specified, but it’s not what I wanted to use. I’m not happy about it, but I won’t be doing it again; an important lesson has been learned to read what’s printed on the packaging – not just buying the cheapest.

I’ve still got some more material to buy. So far, I’ve got around 965 litres of growing medium in there. It still needs nearly 400 litres more to fill it up but I reckon another 225 litres of compost and 80 litres of vermiculite will be near enough for now.

I’m also making a pair of half-sized frames out of PVC electrical conduit to sit over the top. These will be covered in nylon mesh to keep the major pests out (like the neighbour’s cat who likes to use it as a litter tray). When necessary, I can also cover it with fleece to keep out the carrot fly or polythene to turn it into a big cloche.

It’s looking good and I’m optimistic. I’m always optimistic.

The Wannabee Kitchen Gardener

Steve Morgan — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:04:00 GMT

I’m no gardener. Oh, I’ve dabbled in the past but soon lost interest. My wife would say I’m like that about most things. Last year, for the first time in ages, I decided to have a dabble with growing a couple of bits. I ended up choosing tomatoes, some chillies, a few herbs and some alpine strawberries.

It wasn’t an unmitigated success. I was doing well with the tomatoes until they were ultimately attacked with blight. In total, I probably got to eat about a pound of them. And they weren’t great tomatoes. My chillies managed a couple of fairly small but viable specimens. So I ate those straight off the plant. Same goes for the alpine strawberries. The herbs? Well, I’m not entirely sure what happened to those. There’s a pot with some sage in it still there. But otherwise, there’s not much sign of anything at all.

So, what went wrong? No point in blaming the weather (I have absolutely no idea if it made any difference). I put it down to primarily (a) lack of experience and (b) lack of commitment. My father-in-law turns out fresh produce by the barrel load and has been doing since time immemorial. What does he know that I don’t?

Well, this year, I figure I’ve got more experience than last year and, as is my wont, I’ve been reading everything I could practically lay my hands on about kitchen gardening. Theoretically, I’m right up there with the best of them. If only successful gardening was all based on theory...

So, what remains is to address the lack of commitment. I must admit that the current financial climate has given me something of a push in the right direction, as I look for easy ways to save a little money. Growing your own kitchen produce has to be good for the pocket, right? After all, it’s virtually free...

Hmm. Looking at how things are going at the moment, I’m not entirely sure that it’s quite as cheap as I’d imagined. What with tools, raised beds, growing medium, seeds, fertilisers and additives, it soon mounts up. I’m not expecting to make much of a saving this year. Let’s hope next year there’s some sign of payback!

OK, so let’s treat it as another hobby. That’s much easier, because collecting hobbies is one of my favourite hobbies. I’ve got loads of them. Another one can’t do any harm, right? The good thing about adopting a new hobby is that I don’t ever bother trying to justify them. I just jump straight in and see how it goes. Sometimes it works really well. My mother told me that computing was another of my “five day fads” when I decided it was to be my latest hobby (and could I have a ZX81, please?). That was getting on for thirty years ago and I get paid for doing it these days. Other times, it doesn’t work so well. I have a drysuit in the loft from my jet-skiing hobby. It’s right there next to my bowling balls. You get the picture...

Of course, what fosters commitment to a hobby is success. So, as long as I can produce lots of edible stuff from the garden, I’ll have been successful and that’s bound to spur me on to bigger and better things. Hmm. What about an allotment? And a greenhouse?

Well, it’s obvious I’ve got a lot to learn and lots of hard work to do (eek!). Why not stick around and see how I get on? Make yourself comfy and let’s see what happens as I try to make this thing work. If you’re really lucky, we might discover something interesting together. If I’m lucky, you may have some useful hints and tips to help me on my way. And if I’m not so lucky, you might just get a bit of a chuckle out of my amateurish failure.

Steve Morgan - Serial Hobbyist : Fruit, Vegetables

Building the Kitchen Garden from the Ground Up

The Wannabee Kitchen Gardener