The Plot - planning a new vegetable garden

The dark winter months are almost over, the days are ever so slightly longer and life is re-emerging in the garden. Everywhere there are clumps of snowdrops, interspersed with aconites and hellebores and the occasional early daffodil. Storms Ciara and Dennis have done their worst with a few of the fence panels, another unexpected cost to account for, but mostly (so far) winter has passed without incident. As I write this, the sun is shining through the window, the warm golden light an almost forgotten pleasure after weeks of endless rain.

With a larger garden in the new house, I intend to save more on food costs by growing my own. Much of the garden is full of mature trees and shrubs so I've planned for two raised beds to sit near the kitchen door on a rather ugly but sunny patch of concrete. This means that I'll be able to start growing this year without too much fuss, designing the garden will follow on after we've finished the house (silent laugh...this is likely to take years). Costs, both financial and environmental have been a keen factor in designing what I want to do. I've decided on two plots of 1.2m x 1.2m, made from untreated recycled wood, bought on eBay for a bargain price. These will sit together, with enough room to step around easily and a space next to the fence for tomatoes later in the year. The two plots will be separated into 4 rows, each 30 cm wide giving me 8 different growing areas for a succession of planting throughout the seasons.

My gardening skills are definitely in the 'keen amateur' class, although I did have a fairly successful allotment for nearly 10 years (great for getting to know people and swop produce, not so much fun when having to explain the somewhat 'relaxed' attitude to weeds to a kangaroo court of allotment society stalwarts on an annual basis). Wintry evenings have been spent drooling over seed catalogues (far to easy to get carried away and spend serious money) before selecting a small(ish) variety of seeds. I've chosen vegetables I like to eat (sorry runner beans) with the odd exotic not often seen in the shops. I've tried to include plants where I'll get a double harvest, turnips and beetroot for example, as both the leafy green tops as well as the bulb are edible, peas and broad beans, for the pods and young shoots. Where possible I've chosen plants with colour, purple beans, rainbow chard, freckled dwarf borlotti beans. Maybe this year I'll be able to give Dad some produce in return for his deliveries of homegrown potatoes and squash, although I'm sure he'll still provide me with endless runner beans.