10 Ideas For Your Plot This Year

There is nothing like a new project to get your teeth into in the new year. Emma Rawlings suggests a few ideas that may inspire

- Emma Rawlings

1 GO WILD

Wildflower patches and more naturalistic planting are very popular right now. Just a small area of wildflowers on your plot somewhere will encourage pollinators to your crops. Naturalistic planting creates a softer look to the garden and you could incorporate areas of grass allowed to grow longer, perhaps planted with bulbs or wildflowers. Cottage-style borders with a wide range of flowers and maybe ornamental grasses intertwined will create an informal look. Fruit and vegetables can be planted among the flower borders to make the garden productive too. Neatness and order should be discouraged and flowers allowed to seed to provide food for the birds and even a nettle patch here and there will provide food for many moth and butterfly larvae.

2 PLANT A TUBTRUG GARDEN

If you only have a small back yard or maybe rent and don’t want to invest permanently in the garden, why not make a colourful Tubtrug veg garden? Tubtrugs come in all sizes and in a vast array of colours. They are so cheerful and once planted with colour co-ordinated flowers and lots of vegetables you will have an attractive moveable feast, quite literally. You will need to drill several holes in the bottom of the trugs or they will just fill up with water. Then use multi-purpose compost or soil if you have any. The large shallow 35-litre ones (28.5cm high and 57cm diameter) will make ideal salad leaf containers. The deeper 38-litre (33cm high and 45cm diameter) are a good size to grow a wide range of veg including one courgette plant or several French bean plants and a good crop of carrots. Anything that holds soil could be used so don’t throw out any buckets or even old suitcases or wooden boxes. Reuse and grow some veg in them.

3 EDGE THE BORDERS