In my last potagère post I spoke about speaking to my pops about where to plant the veg I’d bought – being a newbie I had no idea. I started planting on his advice and then I looked around; evidently I’d bought too much! I looked into extending the growing space but realised that there was no way this would help. Yikes!
I came up with a two pronged solution; extending the planting area and looking into complimentary planting. You can do this based to make the most of your space and on enable your plants to grow better. I quickly got confused by it all. However these are some of the sites I found helpful in trying to work out a planting plan.
Complimentary planting to save space
Gives a good description and ideas of what to plant with what.
The same as above; I found I had to look on different sites to get ideas for different veggies.
I’d already planted mine, but a great idea.
This is particularly good for containers or pots.
This has a particular focus on succession planting, or planting another crop when one has finished.
Complimentary planting to help veggies grow
This has lots of vegetables with a link to each one which takes you to an in-depth page on what to plant with it, and what to avoid. It’s good, but lots of clicking can be time consuming.
This has information and a chart that is basic to look at, and a good size amount of veggies detailed. Good to start getting your head around the subject.
Like the above, but an even briefer list.
This was one of my favourites; a good sized list of veggie soup in a basic format. I found it really helpful as I’d bought a large selection and this meant I could get quite a bit of information quickly.
We have a seperate, pre existing herb garden, but eventually I want to move them into the main potagère. With its focus on herbs I’ve bookmarked this for future reference.
After the research this is what I came up with.
On the far bed I’m growing red lettuce as it’s a little shadier there. As the lettuce grows mainly above ground I’ve added carrots – which grow predominantly below ground and are good companions – as well as onions, which grown below ground too but seem to grow at different times and at take up a different space below ground. I kept double checking whether onions were ok to grow with these two as they can, apparently, affect what grows around them.
The middle bed was interesting to lay out. I’ve mixed red cabbage in with beetroots – one grows above ground and at a different time than the other. Additionally parsnips and sweet potatoes (towards the front of the picture – I’m hoping I’ve spread them out enough 😟) and spring onions are intermixed throughout.
Planting onions was the most difficult thing in terms of planning. I bought three trays; red, yellow and spring. They don’t look like anything much, but actually the growing distances really spread them out so it takes some thinking through. Particularly when added to the fact that they affect other plants.
This one has celery interspersed with red onions – largely based on the fact that celery can grow with onions. This is an afternoon shot, but it’s actually one of the sunnier beds.
I’ve put these pots all along the wall – eventually I’m going to do another dry stone wall. We have to have a door put in an internal wall which will result in sufficient stone, perhaps towards the end of the summer it will get done. In the meantime there are cucumbers with potatoes (these grow we’ll together) and mange tous. I was originally going to put onions with the mange tous, but they’re not a good match.
Above are some beans and cucumbers too.
All down the side where some bed’s that had had hydrangea that needed digging out, the sides of which weren’t very high. In addition further along was the area where many of these rocks came from (you can see all the befores here) and I so wasn’t looking forward to this as my body was achingly from all the work. Then Pops came up with the genius idea of just laying bags of compost there.
Not the best photo, as my hand is in the way. You can see where I’ve grown plants that need deep roots (tomatoes and courgettes) I’ve used two bags. I cut a hole in the top of one, then in the bottom of another before placing that over the other. Then I cut holes in the top bag and planted.
The other bags, which have lettuce in them, are only one deep.
This saved so much time and if I have enough rocks post doorway I’m just going to build up the sides and use the dirt here rather than digging out again.
I bought waaaaaay too much and ended up giving some veggies to my Pops. In fact I’ve planted hardly any potatoes due to space and so I’m going to put the rest in the cool larder in the garage. Perhaps when I have the bigger beds next year I can plant more, but I’m already thinking of removing some more of the hydraenga to make some more room in the exterior beds.
My cucumber plants seem to have died already ( 😞). I’ll see how they go, but this is just going to be a learning year I think.
What’s exciting is that we are now getting about three eggs a day! We had to stop Lilly going in and picking up Lady Jane Grey as she’d stopped laying. But the only one not laying now is Apple, who I think is suffering from PTSD after the dog attack 😧. She’s doing a lot better though.
Yesterday the girls and I took four eggs each to our neighbours who seemed thrilled and were really excited we have chickens, which is sweet. One of our neighbours was asking about the porch and saying how lovely it was. When she asked where I got it from and I told her leboncoin she was really impressed; apparently they’re very expensive. It’s nice to know we’ve had a bargain!
I’m off to water the tress at the front now, God bless!
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