I live in a small house in Southampton which has an equally small garden attached. Since moving in nearly 2 years ago little has been done to the garden except basic maintenance such as mowing lawns and trimming hedges.
But this year this should hopefully all change, I am planning to try and grow herbs and vegetables in the small amount of space that I have and see how viable this is in a typical city garden.
Most of my early gardening is based in pots as I didnt want to place anything straight into the soil with out knowing what was there already but not visible. I also wanted to change the garden around but was not sure where everything would go and wanted to get my hands dirty a bit. Additionally this potted garden idea proved to be useful when I moved back to my parents for most of the summer as it meant that they could all be transported up there in the back of their car and could be tended to over the very hot summer months we experienced.
Having returned to Southampton for the uni year I am trying to make the new plants a more permanent feature in the garden and am going to be focusing upon two main beds. The 'Veg Bed' and the 'Herb Bed':
The Veg Bed:
This bed is situated at the back of the garden and is the front section of a larger bed which contained a small number of plants originally, but the section that is going to be converted to providing food for us was almost completely devoid of plants at the outset.
Having returned to Southampton for the uni year I am trying to make the new plants a more permanent feature in the garden and am going to be focusing upon two main beds. The 'Veg Bed' and the 'Herb Bed':
The Veg Bed:
This bed is situated at the back of the garden and is the front section of a larger bed which contained a small number of plants originally, but the section that is going to be converted to providing food for us was almost completely devoid of plants at the outset.
This is a quick schematic of the Veg Bed and its surrounding beds. The bottom of the picture would transfer to lawn, if this was drawn, and both the left and top edges being boundary fences.
**UPDATE** March 2011
Progress is being made to make the bed suitable for taking plants in the near future. I have stripped back all the runners from the Ivy and Honeysuckle. Dug the existing soil over, removing the largest stones and subsequently added about 10 bags of soil gained from both of my sets of grandparents.
Here it is now:
**UPDATE** March 2011
Progress is being made to make the bed suitable for taking plants in the near future. I have stripped back all the runners from the Ivy and Honeysuckle. Dug the existing soil over, removing the largest stones and subsequently added about 10 bags of soil gained from both of my sets of grandparents.
Here it is now:
The Herb bed:
This is the bed which has had the most attention since I moved in but is still in the same sorry state it was at the beginning. It has one large tree in one corner and is bounded on two of the garden sides by pre-existing plants. Between it and the lawn is a short but stocky conifer hedge, and on the adjacent side separating it from the garden steps is a quite straggly lavender bush.
The left hand side of this bed is a boundary fence, above is the lawn, to the right steps going up from the paved area directly behind the house which stretches infront of the bed as well.
This bed is the closest to the house so was the obvious choice for the location of my herbs.
