Getting the vegetable garden ready for spring

If you want to grow your own fruit and vegetables on an allotment, in a vegetable patch, or a kitchen garden, preparing the soil for planting is really important. I've got less than a couple of hours a week to spare, so I've been doing it a bit at a time over winter. But it's not too late to start now either. Here's what I've been doing to ensure a great harvest later this year...

This is how my 80 Minute Allotment looks right now. In this post I'm going to give you a guided tour of my plot and explain what I'm doing in each part of it to create the best growing conditions I can for the coming year, in as environmentally friendly way as I can, and by spending as little money on it as possible!

The 80 Minute Allotment's four main beds

I get an average of about 80 minutes a week to grow fruit and vegetables on my allotment. If you've also got limited time to grow your own, then come and visit me regularly on the 80 Minute Allotment. Click here to Subscribe by Email and you'll get regular updates on how I use my time, in short sessions of two hours or less. I'll show you how growing your own can fit into a busy lifestyle and still produce regular harvests of fresh fruit and vegetables all year round. 

In the picture above you can see the main part of my plot is divided into four beds by very rough intersecting paths of reclaimed bricks. You might notice there are already things growing in some of the beds.

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One is the brassica bed, which has been full of cabbages, kale and broccoli all winter. We've been harvesting these regularly since late November, apart from the purple sprouting broccoli on the right, which should be ready to pick next month.

The brassica bed is productive throughout winter

After that they'll be cleared away and the ground will need to be lightly dug and raked over to create a fine tilth suitable for sowing carrots, beetroot and parsnips. These will replace the brassicas because I rotate my crops each year. I explained the way I rotate them in my previous post on getting started:

See also: Getting your allotment or vegetable patch started

Preparing to grow onions with compost and leaf mould

Another bed is dedicated to the onion family, including garlic which I planted in the autumn. The rest of the onions will be planted in spring.  

Garlic in the onion bed - onions to be added later

The main preparation for all these beds each year is adding organic matter, such as horse manure or compost. These add nutrients and improve the soil structure as they get broken down and integrated into the ground by the worms.

Onions don't do so well on recently manured ground though, so I either add it as soon as last years crops are cleared away to give it loads of time to break down, or use only compost rather than manure. I also spread some leaf mould, which helps improve the soil structure.

I've covered the garlic with netting to prevent squirrels or birds digging them up before they are established. It's probably OK to remove the net now. When I plant the onions, I'll move it over them instead, to protect them until they are firmly rooted.

Preparing vegetable beds with green manures

The other beds are empty of crops at the moment but are being prepared for planting later in the spring. In one bed I sowed green manures. These are plants which help the soil structure by occupying the ground and stopping it getting compacted over winter. They also help suppress weeds. I used Phacelia and Ryegrass. 

Green manure growing in another bed

In the next few weeks I will dig the green manures up and fork them into the soil which will add some nutrients. It'll be interesting to compare it with the remaining bed which has simply been covered in horse manure and the used straw from last years strawberries.  

Preparing vegetable beds with manure

Horse and chicken manure are both suitable for adding to vegetable beds and are both widely available. I've added horse manure to this bed as well as the left over straw. These have just been left to rot down and be worked in by the worms. The longer you give them the better, but even if you add manure now, it should be well broken down by April or May when you can sow a number of vegetable crops.

Empty bed covered in manure and compost

Root crops like carrots or parsnips are likely to grow into strange shapes if you plant them too soon after adding manure, but potatoes, brassicas and peas or beans won't mind so much.

If you leave it late, you may need to dig in the manure yourself to speed things along a bit - adding it earlier means the worms do the work for you!

Plan your vegetable bed

So those are my main four beds. I find it helps to have a good idea from the start of what's going to be planted where. As I'm rotating my crops, each group will move to the next bed in the rotation, growing on different ground to last year.

When it comes to working out how many of each crop I'll grow, and how much space they'll need, I'll be using a very similar plan to last year, though everything will have moved round one step in the rotation. For a simple guide to making your own plan,  and to see mine, check here:

Allotment planting plan - a step by step guide 

Of course you can try different varieties each year, to find which do best for you, or just for the sake of experimenting for fun!

Growing your own fruit

If you're going to grow your own fruit, these will typically be more permanent plantings, without the need for crop rotation.

At the top of my plot I have a bed of strawberries and raspberries. The raspberries were only planted last year. They are at the top left of this picture, in a row down the side of the plot. 

Though strawberries don't need to be rotated like other crops, they do become less productive after they are 3 or 4 years old. It is worth planting some new ones each year on fresh ground, and getting rid of the oldest ones. 

You might be able to see a few runners I've potted up. These new baby strawberry plants will be planted down at the bottom of the plot on fresh ground. 

My strawberry bed

Getting rid of weeds from a new vegetable bed

The strawberries will gradually be replanted in this area at the bottom of the plot. It wasn't cultivated at all before so was full of weeds. I've already removed weeds from part of it and added manure and leaf mould to get it ready for planting. 

The new strawberry bed covered in compost, manure and plastic

The rest is covered in plastic sheets with cardboard underneath. This blocks out the light and stops (most) weeds growing, while the cardboard will rot down and work into the soil, improving the texture and adding some nutrients.

If you've got a plot full of weeds, then that's a good way to get started. There's more details here:

How to keep weeds out of your allotment (or vegetable patch)

Every allotment needs a compost heap

Finally, the engine room of any plot - the compost heap(s). I've got two bays, both made from recycled wooden pallets. I also have an old green plastic compost bin which is full of leaves rotting down to make leaf mould.

See also: How to make leaf mould

In between are some rusty old tools and all the wooden poles and sticks that I'll be using to support peas and beans, or the protective netting over all my crops. I don't have a shed on the plot, so everything is stored here next to the lovely wooden bench from which I can keep an eye on everything.

Compost heaps and storage area

So that's your tour of The 80 Minute Allotment. Now it's time to start growing things again!  My first job of the year was cutting down the autumn raspberry canes:

The first Grow Your Own job of the year

With manure, compost and leaf mould spread on the various beds to prepare them for planting, I'll soon be sowing seeds, indoors at first, ready to fill the plot with veg as the year progresses. And it'll all be done 80 minutes at a time! 

If you're growing your own this year, and especially if you don't have that much time to do it, make sure you visit The Green Fingered Blog throughout the year to see what to do and how.

Come back soon to see what I'm doing next in my mission to produce plenty of fresh fruit and veg in just 80 minutes a week.

Happy growing,

Paul

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