Designed to be eaten

It is now just over 6 weeks until the BBC Gardeners' World Live show and my panic levels are rising slightly. I have been sowing seeds for this project since early February when I was working on the design side of things. The successful designers were due to be notified in early March, so I figured that it would be too late to start some plants at that stage, so optimistically began sowing sweet peas and other fairly hardy seeds. My greenhouse is bursting at the seams and I feel like I've been pricking out lettuce and other seedlings since the very dawn of time, but I'm optimistic that I will be able to fill the raised bed come June.

The plans below are taken from my submitted application to the RHS. As Edible Patches is considered an amateur category, they weren't too prescriptive about how the submission was made. Which is lucky, as my autocad drawing skills are somewhat limited. So, drawing on my knowledge of garden design plan types, I went for a 'plan view' (a bird's eye view) of what the bed would look like and two 'elevation views'  – a simple sketch giving a sense of what it would like standing at each of the long sides looking across the bed. My freehand drawing skills stopped developing at age 13, so I relied on my trusty iPad and an app called Paper to put my ideas down in a visually attractive way.

The plan view gives a very simplistic impression, mainly concerned with colour and texture variations between my selected crops and flowers. The plan is not to scale, so I also generalised the space taken up by each plant.

In the elevation views, you can get more of a feel to the vertical structure and hierarchy of the components of the raised bed. The 3 central circles in the plan view have become wigwams up which climbers will grow. Some plants are in symmetry across a central axis, some contrast with the plant adjacent or reflect some element of the plant at the opposite side.

Lastly, this is the planting plan and plant list. Still, the space taken by each type of plant is generalised but this allows you to see what plants I am intending to use in what area of the bed.

1. Limnanthes douglasii (poached egg plant)
2. Broccoli Kailan 'Kichi'
3. Nasturtium 'Milkmaid'
4. Kohl Rabi 'F1 Ballot'
5. Asparagus pea
6. Chard 'Bright Lights'
7. Basil 'Red Rubin'
8. Lettuce 'Romana Mortarella Verde D'Inverno'
9. Lettuce 'Navara'
10. Cucumber 'La Diva'
11. Climbing Nasturtium mixed
12. Broad Beans 'Crimson Flowered'
13. Lathyrus chloranthus 'Lemonade' (sweet pea)
14. Cucamelon
15. Purple dwarf french beans
16. Sage
17. Dill 'Bouquet'
18. Pea 'Golden Sweet'
19. Lancashire Lad purple podded pea
20. Lathyrus odoratus 'Matucana' (sweet pea)
21. Fennel
22. Cerinthe major 'purpurescens'

My selection criteria for these were:

* edible crop or companion plant with a specific benefit to edible crops

* can be grown from seed

* easy to grow – no specialist gardening knowledge or equipment needed

* has an attractive merit: flower colour/shape, colourful leaves/stems, unusual variety, productive crop

The Edible Patches are designed to show how a small area can be turned over to edible crops, so I made sure that everything I chose will grow well in shallow soil or containers (as some people's small space might be a patio or balcony) and I wanted to show how quickly edibles can get from sowing to harvest.

I may have to make a few small tweaks/changes to this design by the time the show comes around. My sage is an existing plant in a beautiful container, that was grown from seed a few years ago, but everything else has been sown since autumn 2013. I have plenty of back-up plants as well as a few replacements in case one variety fails, succumbs to pests or simply gives up the ghost in the next few weeks. But I hope to stick as faithfully to my original design as I can.

Slug patrol

To follow up on my previous post, I can report that I did order some nematodes a few weeks ago. Application is very easy – the contents of the packet are mixed with a specific volume of water and then you simply water the lot over your garden. I had 6 raised beds to treat and then used the remainder on specific areas of the wider garden where slugs are causing a problem. I planted out 4 echinacea plants that I raised from seed last year, and within 3 days, they were looking very nibbled and sorry for themselves. I also have an open area of a sunny bed where my dahlias will go, so that was a target area to treat also.

So far, things are looking pretty good. I planted out meteor pea seedlings a week ago and there are very few signs of any slug damage on those. The plants have really started to grow well in the recent warm weather and a couple of them are now showing flowers.

And in the greenhouse, where space is a little tight right, I've been pricking out my tomato plants. Hopefully I will have room to move these onto larger pots next month.

I am finding small slugs and snails in the greenhouse still – maybe hitchhiking in on the bottom of a pot? It's not all bad news though as the chickens are making short work of these as a breakfast treat!

In need of nematodes?

While doing a spot of weeding the other day, in preparation for potato planting, I came across an alarming number of slug eggs in the soil. Doing a bit of internet research on the subject made for worrying reading:

• A slug can lay 20-100 eggs several times a year
• Slug eggs can remain dormant in soil for many years, hatching when conditions become suitable.
• A cubic metre of garden can contain upto 200 slugs
• Slugs are hermaphrodite (possessing both male and female reproductive organs) so can mate with any slug of the same species they come across.
• They can also reproduce without a mate by producing eggs without the male gamete being transferred (parthenogenesis).
• Only 5% of a slug population will be above ground at any time. The remaining 95% will be below ground, laying eggs, feeding on roots and seed sprouts, and digesting your newly emerged seedlings.

(slug facts courtesy of slugoff.co.uk) 

Last year was just awful - I'd never seen such a rampage of slime-secreting leaf-eaters that ploughed through my seedlings last spring. Previous years I've not had such a big problem. They occasionally hit a particular plant – salad leaves are usually popular – but 2013 was notable for virtually nothing being safe. They worked their way through so many of my crops – they put paid to the first sowing of rocket salad and of beetroot. I sowed carrot seeds three times and had the grand total of two carrots reach true leaf stage. They took down a lot of my pea, borlotti bean and sugar snap plants when they were first planted out, they nibbled lots of the potato haulms and had a really good go at the courgette and squash plants. I feared they might have finished off my Hooligan pumpkin plant but thankfully it rallied and went on to produce a single fruit. One after one they decimated my baby nicotiniana plants. I kept some replacements in the greenhouse, but even there they didn't seem to be safe – a few nibbled leaves and even telltale trails on my 4 foot tall tomato plants. It seems there is nowhere a slug won't go for some dinner.

Having had such a mild winter, I fear for the 2014 crops already. A less than frosty winter means that the slug population has avoided the natural population control of freezing temperatures, so I may well employ the services of nematodes to keep the hungry hordes at bay. My finger is hovering over the 'Buy' button as the weather warms up and hoping that there will not be a shortage of the product as many fellow gardeners do the same.