Growing what we eat
The whole reason for the plot: real food, picked the same day it’s cooked, planned around a year of dinners rather than a tidy diagram.
I don’t grow for show. Every bed has to earn its space by putting something on the table, so I plan backwards from how we actually eat — the meals we cook on a wet Tuesday, not the glossy ones in the catalogue.
That means a lot of the staples: potatoes for the dark months, alliums that store, brassicas that shrug off frost, and climbing beans that turn a single square metre into a wall of food. Around them I tuck the quick wins — salad, radish, herbs — into any gap that opens up.
Planning around the plate
The plot is roughly five metres by twelve, split into no-dig beds with narrow paths between. I keep a rough four-bed rotation so the same family of plants isn’t sitting in the same soil two years running, which keeps the worst pests and diseases guessing.
The trick I’ve learned the hard way is succession: a little and often beats one big sowing. A short row of salad every fortnight means I’m never staring at a glut and a gap at the same time.
A note from experience
The hungry gap — that lean stretch in early spring when the winter crops are spent and the new ones aren’t ready — gets a little shorter every year. Overwintered garlic, purple sprouting broccoli and stored squash are what bridge it.
What’s earning its keep
In the beds now
- Broad beans — cropping
- Chard & kale — cut-and-come-again
- Garlic & shallots — fattening
- First potatoes — earthing up
- Tomatoes — setting fruit
Going in next
- Climbing beans
- Courgette & squash
- Leeks for winter
- Beetroot, successional
- Purple sprouting, for the hungry gap