Starting my veg patch

Im not sure what point there is as we might be moving in 12-18 months will this make it a waste of time?
Spots for the veg patch are limited because of our animals. The pigs have a paddock and will probably break through a fence if i did it in there to get to food as they really are pigs!
Then theres the front garden/paddock home to the cow and sheep so all ive got really is a hill on top of the dam.

How do i start it off? What to i need and what do i do?
what veg are easy for beginners?
we eat a lot of:
potatoes
pumpkin
garlic
onion
capsicum
tomatoes
zucchini
rubarb
lettuce
cucumber

im open to any veggies though

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it's probably not the right season to start planting a lot of these things - most need to be planted in spring for the best harvest. a lot of the items are coming to the end of their season now (or very soon)

you could probably start preparing an area now if you want to plant for next season - google no-dig vegie patch for ideas on how to prepare areas without having to dig down a lot - you could prepare them over autumn/winter ready for planting early in spring

google "gardening australia veg planting guide" - the first link to come up is a good one for picking your climate and looking at what you can plant each season - it also allows you to see what risks you may have in dealing with the different vegies (caterpillars etc) and some natural solutions to help with that (which is new - off to beak a bit more myself!)

I was going to suggest the Gardening Australia site too! Not sure about your climate, but I'm sure there'll be something you can grow now. Here, I find capsicum, tomatoes and lettuce ( I prefer the perpetual salad greens where you just pick the leaves and they keep growing) easy to grow and zucchini and cucumber is good too. Beans, snow peas and shallots/spring onions are always great here too.

Make sure you have a good starting soil, lots of compost! Manure, well dug...

itsgoing to take a while to set up anyway.
i have plenty of manure ready!

is it possible to plant in big tubs like wine barrels so that when we move it can just be transported even if its not ready for harvest?

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yup we have a lot of our vegies in pots at the moment as we are renting. the preparation of soil is much the same. just make sure you look at cyclic gardening (using different veg in each pot each season so they don't deplete all of one nutrient from the soil - some replenish as they go) and perhaps companion planting (planting herbs under other veg for their insect repelling factors so you don't have to use chemicals)

thanks BG thats very helpful, isnt it things like basil and tomatoes paired together?

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I agree on the no dig idea- I've done this a number of times.
This time of year, you are looking at brasicas - so broccoli, cauli, cabbage. The are all pretty easy to grow. In spring you will be able to plant peas, corn,tomatoes, zuchini, cucumber, etc.

As for the time frame, 6-8 mths max is your havest time for most things, much less for alot of summer plants so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Potatoes and pumpkins won't grow if planted together, ironically! Pumpkins have the capacity to take over everything, I've seen the plant fill an entire 1/4 acre block backyard lol. I think you've probably missed the tomato season. Things like onion and garlic take a really long time to grow - I planted brown onions last year and they took 8 months, but they were a sensational flavour and they reseeded themselves this year. Lettuce is pretty simple but the snails do love it and caterpillars devoured my broccoli (leaves only, they left the vegie itself alone). Capsicum is another easy one to grow - mine was super-neglected and I still got small capsicums off it.

Last year was my first attempt at growing my own things. We have a tiny suburban block so I used the "dead" side of the house and planted in the retaining wall style garden bed. We got pumpkin, carrots, capsicums, broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, beetroot and brown onions. I also have flat leaf parsley, rosemary and oregano growing. I had no previous experience, we just started out with a good soil recommended from the nursery and a couple of bags of chicken poo mixed in. I only watered on really hot days, but it all pretty much got left to it's own devices. I think we ended up with about 50 tomatoes! I looked at what seedlings were available and just planted what I knew we would eat.

Google companion planting.

I would look at starting brassicas (?) too. One good one I found is kale. It just keeps giving & giving. Lettuce is usually good all year. Carrots are a bit harder for container planting unless u have deep ones. They should be sown directly to where they are meant to be planted.

U can start putting garlic bulbs in soon but they take a while though & if uve got limited space it would be taken up by it. U need for it to grow, die off & then harvest. It would be abt end of the year before u can get some.

Herbs are always good for container planting.

Pumpkin, zucchini like someone else said in spring. So is capsicum.




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excellent! thanks this has been so helpful

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yeah i'm pretty sure it's basil and tomato together - we have all our herbs in pots near the garden so i hven't taken a lot of notice of what goes where

zuc plants can get very big
cucumber can grow over the edge of a vegie garden or pot as it puts out runners

pumpkin grows in almost any conditions through spring/summer - you need to let it die off before harvesting the first frost you get in autumn winter (if you let the frost hit you get a better flavour). if you look at some sites about growing them, they all recommend "pinching" the tips - so that you control the number of runners it puts out - and therefore where all it's energy goes (so better pumpkins)

if you want to grow garlic, and currently have any roses in the garden, plant it underneath your roses (helps control aphids)



make sure it's well drained soil - where we have our current garden appeared to be well drained when we moved in (in october/november) but it's actually a bit damp and doesn't drain well, even though DH did some awesome work to break up the soil underneath - so we aren't getting results that are up to what we're used to...