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I am a complete novice when it comes to gardening! We only have a small garden and the previous occupants were clearly not into it. Its just some lawn with borders on two sides with a few shrubs. So far I bought a pot of mint, then a load sprang up this spring!

Anyway, what can I do to get my garden working for us? I would love to grow some herbs, esp ones I can use medicinally. Not much space I think for veg. I bought some manure to put on our manky dry borders but OH is moaning that it will smell so doesn't want me to put it down He never goes out there so I'm jsut tempted to do it anyway, would this be a good time? Can I plant stuff straight onto it?

Thanks for any suggestions to motivate me

Hi naomij

Well-rotted manure (don't use fresh manure on your garden - it will trap all of the nitrogen) doesn't smell at all (well, only a little bit and not for very long ). You can top-dress the soil with it or fork it in. And if it IS well-rotted, you shouldn't have too much problem with planting into it - but bear in mind that there are some plants which don't actually react too well to a very rich soil. Probably your best bet is to plant what you want and then spread the manure around the plants but not touching them - if you see what I mean.

Consider using containers for growing veggies and herbs. Sometimes, this is the best way to grow them - as you're about to discover if you have mint in your garden. I hope you like mint .

If you have a convenient wall or fence, you could grow vertically (Google around for that) which decreases the amount of ground area necessary. Mini-tomatoes go great in hanging baskets (and they don't look bad, either). Potatoes can be grown in bin bags. Loads of other tidbits - just have a leisurely crawl around this site. Above all, though, growing stuff isn't so difficult, despite all of the moans from seasoned gardeners - they're just after that extra ounce of weight or week of growing season. Basically, if you chuck some seeds in the general direction of some soil, they're likely to grow. So get stuck in and enjoy.

Mike

thankyou for the reply, lots of interesting ideas for me to find out about! I like the idea of potatoes in bin bags.

I decided to follow your advice and just bung the manure on so this morning I weeded a bit and chucked it all over, I was going to just leave it like that but the soil underneath wasn't as hopeless as I'd feared so I gave it a wee bit of a dig and now I think it looks lovely. I realise that isn't a very big achievement compared many but it was a bit back breaking with 22lbs of sleeping baby on my back! It smells lovely and earthy now and I just need to decide what to plant

I would like to grow things which are useful, but pretty is nice too. I def need to get some more containers for things, and also perhaps collect some rocks from the beach for the borders to remind my son not to play there so much!

I'm a novice but totally agree with Mike. All of these things grew in the past with no cultivation and generally will be ok without any vast knowledge. I had great purple sporuting broccoli 2 years ago and loads of good lettuce. Just buy a few packs of seeds, follow the instructions and hope for the best. well, a bit of that and a bit of research too would be good but deffo just go for it.

I agree with everything said before and would just like to add a couple of points.

If you're going to grow herbs like mint - grow them in pots, otherwise they'll take over.

If you want to grow herbs for medicinal purposes I suggest you get yourself a good book on herbalism (without being rude to the chap - not grow your own drugs - you'll find quite quickly it's not enough - IYKWIM) then make a list of what you want, get the seeds and see what will grow. Not everything will, but if something doesn't succeed in one place try it in another.

As for growing vertically, brilliant suggestion, and don't forget shrubs like Elder (again in a tub or it'll kill everything around it) and climbers.

A final point, with little one's around. Make sure you don't grow anything poisonous. That may sound daft, but a lot of useful herbalist stuff can be - foxglove for example. In an ordinary garden it wouldn't particularly be a problem. But if children see you picking and eating stuff they won't be able to discriminate.

OK, that was more than a couple of points

Thanks for the great tips! I woudl love an elder bush, can you just buy them in a nursery or do I need to get a cutting or something?

Must look up this vertical growing thing.

And yes my border was chocker with mint but I'm gonna pull it all up, maybe make some mint sauce or dry it for tea, and then keep a bit in a pot.

has anyone got a link to growing pots in bin bags?

Thankyou oh knowledgeable ones
And yes I will try not poison the children

You can get some quite posh elders from garden centres - don't know if you can grow them from cuttings but I'd imagine so.

naomij wrote:And yes I will try not poison the children

Good

I'm new to veggie gardening and have found the 'real seed company' really good. They only sell a smallish range of vegetable seeds but they review each one and just sell the ones that they know work well in our climate, without to much fuss and most importantly the ones they think taste great.

I would recommend a raspberry bush in a pot - that way you'll get leaves for their medicinal properties and fruits for your kitchen. Maybe you have somewhere that could do with a new hedge or somewhere where you could make a little arch - there you could have a dog rose - great for petals and rosehips too. Yarrow is amazingly versatile (wound healing, fever cooling, urinary tonic and much more) and also a pretty looking & low maintainance border plant.

A company called Nicky's seeds has a great range of herb seeds and these have gone well for me in the past. You can get the more hard to find herb seeds there, you could try caraway, fennel, soapwort, vervain, stachys - the world is your oyster. I wouldn't plant horsetail though; as useful as it is medicinally it'll take over you garden and it's ever so hard to get rid of.

Do be sure to check your varieties though - they are often not interchangable. For instance you might want to take comfrey leaf as a healing tea (Symphytum officinale) but you don't want to take Russian comfrey (Symphytum uplandicum) internally, that one is good for making a nutritious garden feed but you wouldn't want to feed it to a human as it's poisonous.

Have fun in the garden

P.S. what kind of sling do you have your baby in? I'm looking for a good one for gardening and going to the shops with....

ah thanks for the recommendations that just what I needed to know, esp where to get seeds! Getting a bit late this year I suppose but a girl can plan...

A raspberry bush would be a fab idea! Also I like yarrow a lot, thankyou Just wish I had more space but I'm sure I'll find ways to make the best of it

It is a didymos sling called nino. I have a few cos we don't really use a pram. I find its handy to have a short sling for around the house and short trips, and a longer sling for when we are going out for a while or she might fall asleep. There is a forum called natural mamas where there is a lot of info on slings, you can also buy them secondhand, and sell them on quite easily if you don't like it

Its best not to get me started talking about slings, you get a bit passionate about it!

Have a read through this lot, naomij ...

http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/grapev ... s_122.html

... and there's quite a lot of stuff on here about it.

I think that if you don't pay too much attention to the hype (you get a useful crop, but I've never managed a HUGE crop) you'll be well satisfied.

Mike

hmmm well my garden is a fair size and i got things dotted around the place. tell ya what i'll post some pictures tomorrow. but i use old tyres for my peas and runner beans and have got my crop of patatoes growing in an old bath which i grew last years crop in also so next year i'll be removing that soild and putting fresh soil in or just rotate plants pharps next year i'll grow carrots in there hmmm but yeah i've got a bumper crop of rhubarb this year real big leaves on it and some nice juices stems which will be rady for pulling soon . i also have a pumpkin that i'll be putting out tommorrow along with 2 cucumber plants dont know how they will fare as i have only ever grown them in the greenhouse and the chavs at the place i used to live at there football smashed all my glass so greenhouse still isn't an option . but yeah if you go into scats or mole valley farmers they sell sacks you can grow patatoes in and to be honest patatoes are the most easy crop to grow but then i always seem to get carrots wrong so yeah you can cram alot into a small garden althought garden is a 1/4 of an acre lol but we also have 4 apple trees and lots of shrubs and stuff in the garden the parents seem to like the garden how it is rather than my approach to it is if it doesn't put anything on my plate then its gotta go although i do like a few flowers obviously lol so yeah good luck

Have a look at Alys Fowlers The Edible Garden, she has a small London Garden, although not as small as mine and turned it over to vegetables. There were some really good ideas on her show for small spaces and I know she had a book to go with the series which is avaliable on Amazon, but the programs are probably still on the BBC iplayer I would think.