2019 Garden Plan

Last autumn I started thinking about what I wanted to grow this year, and I decided that – given the current Brexit situation – it might be wise to have a garden of more traditional crops, ones that we enjoy eating, and which would give us fresh food in the event that all of the imports are stuck in a big parking lot in Kent awaiting customs checks. Since then I haven’t given it too much thought, mostly because I’ve been waiting for the government to get its act together and decide what’s happening.

However, it doesn’t appear that’s going to happen any time soon, so I have gone ahead and planned this year’s garden anyway!

There are 12 raised beds in the main garden (and three in the front garden, which are planted with soft fruit). Of those 12, 3 are planted with perennial vegetables and 1 with blueberries.

There are two beds planted with purple sprouting broccoli for spring harvests, and one waiting to be planted with broad beans (which are currently in modules). There’s one of hardy peas, one of onions, one of garlic, and one of leeks that we really should start eating. One bed currently has some carrots left in it (which we should eat) as well as the overwintering parsley plants.

I have decided to plant two beds with potatoes – one early variety and one maincrop – and I’ll buy those when the seed potatoes appear in the garden centre (since I only need about 14 seed potatoes to do both beds).

That doesn’t leave me a lot of space for other things, so there have been some difficult choices. We want courgettes, so I will grow those in with climbing Helda beans over their heads, which worked reasonably well last year (I was late putting the beans in). If I do that it means I have space for both sweetcorn (which we love, but