About the Fruit and Vegetable Garden
Purpose
The wall was built 25ft inside the boundary so that its south and east facing sides could be used to grow wall-trained fruit trees, and the remaining area outside of the wall could be laid out to accommodate two crop rotation systems. The fruit and vegetable garden is an experiment to find out just what it takes to become self sufficient in as many home-grown resources as possible, and this experiment extended to cover the use of water gathered from the roof of the house and the installation of a wind turbine (sadly now dismantled due to mechanical problems), with the aim of providing power for a ground source heat pump under the lawn in front of the house. I dry almost all the food produce which means harvests that are seasonal when fresh are available year-round stored in jars. Everything about the fruit and vegetable garden is experimental so all activities are designed as a quest for information rather than for specific results. Every year I fully expect half of everything to fail, and I only abandon a crop once I have tried five different ways to grow it, so hopefully over the years I'll learn better ways to grow tricky crops and which to avoid completely.
Contents
A range of fruit trees, loganberries and blackberries are trained along the east and south facing sides of the wall, and in the beds at the foot of the wall there are red currant, white currant and blackcurrant bushes. Due to changing weather patterns in recent years the long vegetable beds have now been planted with grapes, and the square beds are currently being used for a rotation of sweetcorn, sunflowers and mixed pumpkins and winter squash. There are also permanently planted beds containing globe artichokes and cobnuts.
History
The hard landscaping for the vegetable garden was done in late summer of 2008 once the wall was complete. The fruit trees and bushes were planted in January 2009, and 2009 was the first full year for the crop rotation systems in the vegetable beds. Below are some photos of the site before and during its construction:
Peak Season: June/July for soft fruit, August/September/October for tree and vine fruit
The fruit harvest begins with the blackcurrants and loganberries in the third or fourth week of June, followed a few weeks later by red and whitecurrants and plums. Early August marks the start of the tree fruit harvest with 'Discovery' apples, followed by a steady stream of apple and pear varieties coming into season right through until late October, and grapes ripening in the late summer sun. The gallery below contains photos taken across the growing season:
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