Starting a veggie garden

[Ally]

Hello

I'm really keen to start a vegetable garden. I am pretty new t gardening and am not really sure where to start. I live in Scotland s can anyone tell me what vegetables I should start with? Thank

-- Ally

[Dominic-Luc Webb]

I am over in Sweden, near Uppsala, and having great success with koriander. Potato often works as long as you do not continuously grow it on same ground every year. Beans and peas are usually pretty easy. My biggest upset has thus far been rabbits and deer eating up my plants, particularly chick-peas. No idea why such high affinity of this plant over the many other, but they really go for this plant and I lost my entire crop. Potatoes and koriander have thus far had no such problem.

Tomato seems to be somewhat more advanced, and many of the posts to this list have to do with problems with this plant. On the other hand, growability of seeds directly from the grocery store tomatoes have generally been nearly 100%, so if you plant seeds in good planting soil and maintain temperature around 80 C (greenhouse?) you should get plants, although much can go wrong when flowering time comes round.

On a more non-conformist note, Rumex acetosa and dandelion are both weeds and are edible. I have no problem with rabbits or deer and no particular soil or growing protocol. As weeds, they just grow on their own. My only intervention has been to pull other weeds, but even this is not necessary. I would urge other newbies to consider the benefits of your local "weeds" as an excellent starter crop.

Dominic-Luc Webb

[simy1]

Kale, collard, chicory, peas, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, arugula, fava beans,beets. Make a google search for "cool weather vegetables". Also make a search for "preparing the home garden". Basically, you need to know your pH, you need to break the ground if it is too hard, you need some manure, or you need compost and some chemical fertilizer, and you need a way to water the garden. For each vegetable, google "carrot cultivation in the home garden". and you will find out that these are best directly seeded in light soil and not given much fertilizer (translation: forget carrots if you have heavy soil). Other veggies can be sown in little pots indoors and transplanted later.

[Dominic-Luc Webb]

I am growing carrots on rather tight nearly 100% clay soil. The strain I have is giving excellent carrots. I recognize this goes against the conventional wisdom, and do not know what to make of it. It was definitely success here where I expected failure.

Dominic