Hi, my name is Matthew Oliver. I'm the horticulturist here at
RHS Garden Hyde Hall in the Global Growth Vegetable Garden
and today I'm going to talk about making the most of
whatever growing space you've got in your vegetable garden.
So it doesn't matter how big or small your growing area is you
want to come up with some sort of cropping plan in order to
make maximum use and efficiency of whatever area you've got. If
you've got a small patch maybe just one small raised bed in a
small garden then you might want to ignore some of the crop
spacing distances between plants and pack things in a lot
closer than would be advised so that you can make maximum use
of the small area that you've got. Whereas if you got an
allotment you can probably go down the more traditional route
and space things out as they would be advised and grow
things to full size. Now the next thing you need to think
about is crop rotation if you got a small area crop rotation
perhaps not as important doesn't really matter where and
when you put things but the general principle behind
crop rotation is it's a soil management technique it's to
stop the build up of pest and disease in the soil and
nutrient deficiencies by growing the same crop year in
year out in the same patch. So traditionally you'd have a
three year rotation and divide your crops into three different
groups and move them around your plot every year until you
get back to the beginning. Now you could do a four-year
rotation or even a five-year rotation depending on how much
space you've got and how wide a variety of crops you want to
grow. Once you've decided what crops you want to grow then
coming up with a sowing plan is quite important this will give
you an idea of when you need to sow certain seeds and your
timing of when different areas of your plot are going to be
under use. It's a good way of identifying gaps that may
appear and how you can fill those gaps with different crops
to make maximum use and efficiency of the space that
you've got. A good way of explaining this is there'll be
a certain amount of crops that we would class as frost tender
and we wouldn't be planting them out in the garden until
sort of the end of May or even early June or even later if you
want it to be crops that would fall into those categories
would be things like sweet corn, your runner beans, dwarf beans,
pumpkins, squashes, courgettes where there really isn't a lot
to be gained by planting them outside much earlier than mid
May when risk of cold weather or late frost could really
knock them back or even kill them and that means you would
have a gap in the growing season before all those tender
plants could be planted out that you could make use of to
use that space for another crop and that is what we call catch
cropping and there's certain crops that you could use that
fill those gaps really well and some examples of those would be
anything like lettuces rocket spinach radishes things that
are quick to germinate quick to grow and quick to harvest so
you can get a harvest of them in a short number of weeks and
they'll have been and gone before your main crop for the
season goes into that patch. The other thing you need to think
about especially if you got space is what we call
intercropping and that's perhaps where you would mix
different crops together in the same patch and exploit the the
time difference between different crops maturing - a
classic example of that would perhaps be if you had a block
of sweetcorn that you're doing when the plants are very young
perhaps45 centimeters to two foot between plants and that's
a lot of wasted space but you can make use of that space for
the sweetcorn matures so you could mix two crops together
and in the spaces in between do a much smaller crop like a
lettuce that means you're making maximum use of the
ground you've got before the sweetcorn get big and mature
and shade out the the crop you're using to inter crop with
them. You can also think about catch cropping in terms of the
other end of the season there'll be a certain range of
crops that will finish early good example of those would be
something your first early potatoes that you'd be
harvesting by June or July or your spring sown onions that
will be finished by July perhaps peas that will be
finishing in June or even broad beans that would be done
especially if you did an autumn sowing of broad beans that
would be done by even May and that's going to give you the
back end of the summer at least may sometimes 12 to 16 weeks of
empty space that can be used after your main crop has come
out. So some examples of things that you could follow those
crops up with traditionally once your first early potatoes
come out they would be followed on by a crop of leeks in July.
You still have time to crop those. Er perhaps when your
onions came out or your broad beans came out. You could do
successional sowings of dwarf beans. Um so you'd have a first
sowing and then your second or even third sowing of those
they'll keep cropping right into the autumn for you. Or you
can delay the sowing of some of your frost tender plants and
just put them out fractionally later than perhaps what would
be advised on the back of the packet. So you can make this as
complicated or as easy as you like. You can draw up a
cropping plan on the back of an envelope with a pencil or you
can even go to the lengths of producing something on the
computer with lots and lots of detail. I keep it really
simple. Pen and paper. Draw out your plot and just scribble on
it where and when you want to put things. But the best thing
that works for me is to make it to scale and fairly accurate
that means in the dark winter months before you start sowing
things you can get down to quite fine detail about how
much space you've got how much space the crops you want to
grow are going to take up and you can get it really accurate
and that means when it comes to the busy time in the summer
you've not gotta think too much you're just following on paper
exactly to your plan and that'll make it much more
easier to find success in the veg garden. So the only other
bit of advice I'd give you if you're new to veg gardening is
to be patient don't rush with your seed sowing it's still
very early in the year and you've got lots of time really
isn't much to be gain from sowing heat loving tender crops
in February and March they'll sit and soak in cold compost
with not much daylight and it won't grow away well it's much
much better to wait until the weather is better and have a
healthier crop that's not sitting in a pot for a long
time before it goes out in the garden.