The Evolution of the Vegetable Garden

I was looking through some old photos today and realised just how my vegetable garden has changed! I thought I'd share a few of the images so you can see the evolution of the my growing space over the past two years - and I'm sure there will be more change in 2018 too!

#1

The garden began as a long strip of green and was first divided into several sections; a patio, the aviary and ornamental bed, the oval lawn and cutting garden, the greenhouse and then the vegetable beds. HOWEVER, there was not enough light past the greenhouse and with two dogs and a chicken coop, the oval lawn was destroyed pretty quickly - you can just about make it out under my new plans in the picture above.

#2

Initially I was only going to have three raised beds with ornamental/cut flower beds either side. This soon changed and you can see I began to outline the edges of the paths with bricks left over from where we'd knocked down the wall in our front garden. I didn't dig out any grass; instead I lined the beds with cardboard to smother the weeds and....

#3

Two raised beds followed, quickly followed by the third. You can see that I also made a small coop behind the shed for some of my growing chicks, and I edged the perimeter beds where I still had ornamentals and some one year old cordon fruit trees.

#4

But I quickly ran out of room for chickens, so I had to put in another coop! You can also see here that I made a compost bin from old pallets which I put across from the greenhouse. I had to move the cordon trees which wasn't ideal.

In the second picture you can see one of the ornamental beds. It's not very well organised...it has too many sun loving plants in a shady spot. This year I want to rectify that and change the plants around so they really suit the spot.

#5

Finally, this is the past summer when most of the beds were full of carrots, lettuces, beets and more.

I still have a LONG way when it comes to maximising space and growing the right crop in the right place. But it's always nice to see how much progress has already been made because it spurs you on for the season to come! In 2018 I need to make sure every inch of soil has something growing in it. I need to repair the rickety fence, and I need to better plant the shady ornamental border with flowers and plants that a) I can use a mother plants for small nursery plants and b) for shade-tolerant cutting flowers.

Thanks for reading,

Geoff