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Getting back into fruit & veg growing
KT53
Posts: 9,016
in Fruit & veg
I'm just coming up to retirement and looking forward to having time in the garden. I haven't grown fruit or veg for years and have forgotten anything I ever learnt about it. The Oracle, otherwise known as my next-door-neighbour, has sadly died so I can't call upon his great knowledge of the subject. That means I'm going to have to read up on things. Any suggestions for good books on the subject would be appreciated.
As there will only be 2 of us to feed I also want to avoid planting too much of anything and suffering annual gluts and throwing away perfectly good food.
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For easy access to information about different veggies, the Hessayon series book on Vegetables is good. Joy Larkcom is also good on veggies and salads.
There's a chap on the A4A website who has a very helpful online almanac with a sowing and harvesting guide plus a monthly guide of what to be doing - http://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Planners/Preamble.htm
If it's any reassurance, it does come back to you - the knowledge that you used to have. I used to grow most of our fruit and veg on our smallholding and allotment but then I was getting on for 20 years without a veg patch - having retired just a couple of years ago, I'm surprised at what I remember, and what seems to be instinctive.
One of the books I find most useful (and enjoyable to read) is the River Cottage Handbook No 4 - The Veg Patch, by Mark Diacono.
Good luck
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I'm not planning on starting an allotment. I've 2 unused veg patches, one about 24x12 and the other about 18x12. Aforesaid 'Oracle' used the smaller one and the other has been unused for many years. I dug the larger one over last autumn, removing marestail by hand. The soil is good, easy to dig but with good texture.
Being an old retiree I like the old books, always use The Vegetable Expert by Dr. D. G. Hessayon. He shows all the bugs you can expect, feeding, watering , all the usual problems. Of course, the youngs will say...you don't do that now!
Geoffrey Hamilton's organic gardening book is good. Charles Dowding veggie book is good, and promotes no dig.
I'm not keen on the expert series, often there is no index, and the units are Fahrenheit. He uses chemicals and digging. But they are very clear and well laid out. And you might like chemicals and digging.
The Vegetable and Herb Expert book comes in alphabetical order so no index needed. I don't do chemicals either, or digging, but it's a useful guide if I'm growing something for the first time or working out where I went wrong.
I use raised beds which get compost piled on in late autumn or early winter and then raked levelish. Come spring, a quick hoe and they're ready for planting out seedlings or plugs I've grown on in pots to get them big enough to cope.
Best advice I can give is: sit down in a quiet place with a cup of coffee/tea/whatever and go back in time to all the various conversations you had with The Oracle. You will be surprised at how much will come back to you, especially once you start on the actual work. I have been amazed at how often I 'consult' my granddad, and he died when I was 19!!
Thanks for all the suggestions. Lydiaann, I hope you're happy - that had me in tears
You are probably right though 
I have Food From Your Garden & Allotment, you can get it second-hand on Amazon. It's very good - it has long sections on a huge variety of fruit and veg and general chapters on growing and storing, and preserving.
I suggest going to your local library and borrowing as many books on gardening as you can, then you can read them at your leisure and decide which ones you like enough to get your own copies.
No tears, KT...I had a wonderful childhood living with my mum, 2 brothers and grandparents in Lincolnshire. And although I wasn't a gardener back then (I'm now 71!) these memories were gathered by a sort of osmosis as we had a big garden and orchard and so I'd spent time just sitting around chatting to him about anything and everything. Since then, through many 'gardens' attached to houses I've lived in (RAF quarters, rentals and then our own homes) I've found that books can only help to a minor degree. Getting 'down and dirty' and making your own mistakes is the only way to go (fuelled by mugs of coffee/tea and a great deal of satisfaction when something goes spectacularly right!)