Starting a Kitchen Garden from Scratch

Start with the Site, Not the Seeds

It is tempting to buy a fistful of seed packets and work out the rest later, but a kitchen garden succeeds or fails on where it sits. Almost everything you want to eat — beans, courgettes, tomatoes, beetroot — wants sun, and in a British summer that means at least six hours of it in midsummer. Watch your plot across a day before you commit. South-facing is ideal, east is workable, north is a struggle for anything fruiting.

Avoid hollows and the bottom of a slope, where cold air pools and late frosts nip the blossom off your runners. Aim for ground that drains and doesn't sit under water in February. And be honest about convenience: a bed ten metres from the back door gets watered and picked, one at the far end of a paddock gets forgotten by July.

If this is your first year, fence off a patch roughly 3m by 4m and leave the rest of the field alone. You can double the size once you know what you actually eat.

Beds That Suit Your Plot and Your Back

Beds should be no wider than 1.2m, so you can reach the middle from either side without standing on the soil. Length is your choice; 3m is a good working size. Keep paths at 45cm for walking, 60cm if you want to push a wheelbarrow down them, and line them with bark chip or mown grass to keep mud off your boots.

Raised beds make sense on heavy clay, on shallow soil over chalk, or if you have a bad back. Timber beds 15–20cm deep, filled with a soil-and-compost mix, warm up faster in spring and drain better in a wet winter. On decent ground, though, you can simply mark out beds and improve the soil in place — cheaper, and just as productive.

Orientate beds north to south if you can. It gives plants even light across the row rather than one side shading the other. A no-dig approach works well for beginners: lay cardboard over the grass, pile 10–15cm of well-rotted compost on top, and plant straight into it.

The Soil Is the Whole Game

Get the soil right and half your problems disappear. Test the pH with a cheap kit — most vegetables want 6.5 to 7.0, while brassicas prefer nearer 7.5. If yours is below 6, add garden lime in autumn. A squeeze test tells you the texture: if a ball of damp soil holds together and then crumbles when poked, you have lovely loam. If it shines and slips, it is clay; if it falls apart instantly, it is sand.

• Clay: add compost and grit, and never dig it when wet — you will make bricks.
• Sandy: compost, compost, more compost. It drains beautifully and feeds nothing.
• Annual mulch: 5cm of well-rotted manure or homemade compost each spring, laid on top, no digging required.

Feed the soil and the soil feeds you. Worms, fungi and beetles do the cultivation for free.

Easy Crops for Year One

Resist the temptation to grow everything. These are forgiving, generous and hard to get wrong.

• Salad leaves and radishes: ready in three to four weeks, perfect for sowing little and often.
• Beetroot: sow in April, thin to 10cm apart, and eat the thinnings as leaves.
• Runner and French beans: sow after the last frost, 15cm apart, and pick daily to keep them cropping.
• Courgettes: one plant per person is plenty; two will feed the street.
• Chard and kale: cut-and-come-again leaves from summer into winter.
• Onion sets and garlic: push them in and forget about them.
• Herbs: rosemary, thyme and mint, with mint kept in a pot or it will take over.

Sow in small batches a fortnight apart rather than one big row, and you will have a steady supply instead of a glut followed by nothing.

Tools Worth Owning

You need less than the catalogues suggest. A spade, a digging fork, a Dutch hoe, a hand trowel, a watering can, a ball of string and a wheelbarrow will see you through the first few years. Buy decent ones second-hand — an old forged spade outlasts a cheap new one every time.

The hoe is the tool people neglect and later wish they hadn't. Ten minutes running it through the beds on a dry morning kills weed seedlings before they get a grip. Keep the blade sharp with a file and it becomes a pleasure rather than a chore.

A Simple Year of Tasks

Late winter: spread compost, order seed, and start tomatoes and chillies on a warm windowsill. Spring: sow hardy crops — broad beans, spinach, early carrots — and harden off tender plants. Wait until the last frost before planting out courgettes and beans; in most of the UK that means late May, later in the north. Summer: water deeply twice a week rather than lightly every day, mulch to hold moisture, and harvest often. Autumn: clear spent crops, sow a green manure such as field beans or grazing rye on empty beds, and plant garlic. Winter: plan next year's rotation, sharpen tools, and leave the soil alone. Rest is part of the cycle, and so are you.