Before we can get gardening, we have to decide what different fruits and vegetables we want to grow in our beds. There are so many plants to choose from, which require different conditions and timings for growing and so this post will give you a rough guide on what to think about when planning your garden.
We will be designing and planning our gardens in the first gardening clubs and we hope this post will help you with that, as well as with any future garden planning you may do at school or home. Each school will be given the same variety of fruit and vegetable seeds to grow, but if there is a particular fruit or vegetable you would like to try growing in school, please let us know!
When should I sow seeds?
If you look online, in books, and on seed packets you will find lots of guides and information of when is the best time of year to sow and grow different fruits and vegetables. Because of our climate and the warmer weather over these months, the main growing season in the UK is Spring to Autumn. But, there are still some vegetables that you will find are suitable to grow over the winter which can cope with the cooler conditions.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in particular provides lots of information on what to grow in the different months of the year: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own.
When do we want to be able to harvest the produce?
As you are growing in your schools, you want to plan your garden so that your fruits and vegetables don’t have to be harvested at a time of year when nobody is around, such as the summer holidays. Our VegFest event will be taking place the week before you break up for Summer, and so all the food we harvest and show off can be shared amongst pupils and teachers then.
How long do our plants take to grow fully from seed?
All fruits and vegetables take different lengths of time to be able to grow fully into something that we can harvest and eat. When you look at the seed packets of the fruits and vegetables you are going to sow, you will see information of how long it takes for seedlings to appear as well as of how many weeks it will be before you can harvest.
Where do we sow our seeds?
Where we grow our seed depends on the particular plant we are looking to sow and their ability to cope with the changing weather conditions we experience in the UK. Some seeds are hardy and able to cope with frost and therefore can be sown straight outdoors. Others need constant warm temperatures, and so we will keep them on a sunny windowsill or in a greenhouse. We may first plant our seeds indoors and keep them on the windowsill until consistent warmer temperatures when we may be able to plant them outside.
QUIZ:
Can you answer all of the questions above by looking at this seed packet for carrots? Is this something we could grow in your garden?
We can’t wait to start growing lots of different fruits and vegetables at your schools!
Answer to quiz:
Carrots can be sown from January onwards and take 12 weeks from sowing to harvest. This means we need to start sowing carrots by mid-April to be ready for the VegFest in July. Carrots are a hardy crop and can be sown straight outdoors.
