Baby red lettuce | Photos by the writer
If you are lucky enough to have a medium-sized urban garden, then with ingenuity, double-cropping and lots of hard work, you can produce a surprising amount of fruit, vegetables, herbs and even some pretty flowers on a year-round basis using — as always — sustainable organic growing methods.
First and foremost, you need to study the lie of the land in order to make full use of every single square inch of it in a way that keeps regular maintenance to a minimum and ensures ease of access throughout the garden.
Just about the best way of doing this is to make a series of garden beds. These can be as long as you like but should not be more than three feet wide if located against, for example, a boundary wall and five to six feet if they have footpaths on all four sides. These specific widths allow the gardener to reach all parts of the bed for planting, weeding, harvesting, etc, without having to set a single foot on the soil surface. Standing on soil compacts it, adversely affecting soil texture and the hardworking insects and microbes that help keep it fertile and the plants healthy.
With double cropping, you can have lots of fruit, vegetables and flowers all year round
If at all possible, the beds, along with any rows of plants therein, should be orientated north to south so that plants get the benefit of equal amounts of sunshine on both sides. This encourages balanced growth. Of course, when neighbouring buildings are in the way, you must do the best you can with whatever amount of sunshine is available. Keep in mind that leafy plants, such as lettuce, spinach, cabbage and many herbs, will tolerate more shade than fruiting or root crops — tomatoes, aubergines, pumpkins, courgettes being examples of fruiting ones and beetroot, carrots, potatoes and turnips being root crops. A highly productive garden requires at least six to eight hours of direct sunshine each day.
Also, try to have three beds of equal size so that the root crop bed can be moved to what was the ‘Brassica’ bed and the ‘Brassicas’ to the bed where tomatoes, aubergines, etc., were previously grown. This is generally known as the three-year crop rotation system and helps prevent the build-up of pests and diseases in the soil. It also allows for renewal of essential nutrients and trace elements before a particular crop has a chance to totally deplete them. Growing one type of crop in the same bed year after year is asking for trouble. A three-year or even a five-year crop rotation is an eminently sensible way of maintaining sustainable growing conditions for all your plants, providing that each crop is regularly fed — using old, well-rotted manure, home-made organic compost or compost tea — and mulched to specific crops’ requirements.