Our vegetable garden has been in for quite a few years, we put it in not long after we came to live here. It took quite a while to improve the soil and adding homemade compost and sheep pellets regularly over the early years has produced soil that gives us good crops.
Having such a small space means crop rotation is difficult but can be managed, we only plant vegetables we use regularly and only having to have enough for two people helps with this. At the moment we have lettuce, potatoes, spring onions, peppers, chillies and the very last of our tomatoes, with the brassicas and red onions in for later in the year as well as plenty of herbs. If we hadn’t covered the tomatoes the birds would have had the lot! As well as the vegetable garden we also have a good range of fruit trees and have been eating our own fruit since before Christmas when the cherries started.
We have just picked the apples as the birds were eyeing them up after destroying our grape crop. In a small garden birds are a constant problem much as I love them! Obviously we can’t be self-sufficient but anyone who grows their own produce knows that home grown tastes so much better.
Ray King, President
Canterbury Horticultural Society