Our little plot of joy

Welcome to our Vegetable Garden in Essex, UK.

We have now moved to a new house – Please see our New Build Vegetable Garden Page.

We started growing our own vegetables three years ago in our back garden. We started with the removal of an old crazy paving raised patio, removed soil and an old tree, levelled the surface and put in willow hurdles at the boundary line.

We then moved on to planning, measuring and designing our raised bed area and constructing the raised beds from a company called Woodblocx. The beds are made from individual wooden blocks that are put together with pegs to build up the layers in height, it’s like a Lego construction.

Whilst the design of the vegetable garden was going on, I was starting to sow my first seeds in my new mini greenhouse. We had a great first year, growing our own vegetables with lots of green runner beans! Too many if I’m honest but you learn as you go along. I grew red cabbages for the first time under my own homemade cloches made out of solid blue water pipe and environmesh netting. We had to give the cabbages away to neighbours there was so many and we had a tomato glut that year too!

Year Two, we had learned not to grow too much, we had, had enough of runner beans last year so skipped them that year and we grew interesting vegetables like yellow round ball courgettes and cauliflower romanesco. We put in our very first bare root strawberries and got a decent harvest of beetroot. We also bought an apple and plum tree from Tesco’s and planted them in the ground with fingers crossed they would grow.

This year, Year Three we are growing french beans, a few different varieties, onions and garlic which is new to us, year two on the strawberries and they are growing strong. We have introduced two blueberry bushes an early and a late variety, raspberry canes and a thornless blackberry bush. The apple tree from last year is growing apples so fingers crossed we get a harvest this year.

We are also trying again with the Brussels sprouts, we are determined to get some for our Christmas Dinner this year. The first year was a disaster as I didn’t net them and I have never seen so many cabbage white butterfly caterpillars on my plants in my life. This year they are under netting and except for a slug incident are growing strong.

We also have some interesting trials this year like the The Marigolds Ring of Steel and the Keep Out Cabbage White Butterfly Cage for my Brussels Sprouts.

Where it all began…

Facts about our Vegetable Plot

• Our garden is north facing the sun.
• The Vegetable garden gets very hot at the back near the hurdles in the summer so we grow sun loving vegetables here,
• The plot by the shed gets shaded by the shed in the afternoon so it’s good for vegetables that don’t mind sun and shade,
• The raised beds are 90cm in width so you can reach across them to maintain, weed, plant etc.
• As you can see in some of the photo’s, we are near a wind turbine, it can be very windy in the garden. We put up willow hurdles at the back to reduce the air flow through to the garden and plant some plants lower than the raised bed tops to protect them from wind damage.
• We get slugs, snails, aphids and last year we suffered blight on our tomatoes.
• We love our vegetable garden and hope our experiences with growing vegetables inspire you to try and grow your own vegetables.