The Planting Plan For 2014

You’d think that not much can be done in January in the garden, but really it’s an ideal time to start getting sorted for the year ahead. It’s still a bit too early to start cleaning & tidying (although keeping on top of weeds is never a bad idea) and for me at least it’s still a bit on the cold side to do more than absolutely necessary outside, but it is a perfect time to start planning our plants, fruit and vegetables for next year.

Over the last few years we’ve attempted growing a load of different fruit and veg from raspberries and blackcurrants through to leeks and courgettes, with varying levels of results.

This year we’ve decided to keep things simple and (hopefully) tasty, by just growing the things we really like and have worked for us in the past. This also has the added bonus that we still have a load of half-used packets of seeds that we can finally use up.

If you grow your own fruit and veg, you should rotate your crop planting areas every year to avoid overusing the soil and minimise the possibility of disease.

This is what we’ve decided on so far

Kohlrabi – we already had some success with these and they we’re absolutely delicious. The only problem was that we just didn’t have enough of them!

Spring Onions – We bought some seeds for spring onions last year, but for some reason never got round to sewing them. We’ll definitely give them a try this year!

Lambs Lettuce – I love lambs lettuce, but it’s really quite expensive to buy, so sewing it in our own garden definitely makes sense.

Purple Sprouting Broccoli – We grew some of this lovely broccoli a few years ago and it turned out great. The plants take up a lot of space though as they are huge!

Onions & Shallots – We still have some sets left over from last year that we didn’t get round to planting. It probably isn’t ideal to sew them a year later, but we’ll give it a try and see what happens.

We still of course have our raspberry, blackcurrant and blackberry bushes in the front garden. They have been amazing over the last few years and require almost no maintenance or effort to grow.

We may end up adding a few extra things during the year, but that is pretty much it for now. As we’d like to get our garden into better shape this year, we aren’t going too mad with our planting plans.

Do you grow your own fruit and veg? Do you have any suggestions to add to our planting plans? Have you already started your plant planning for 2014?