Heavy clay, about six hours of direct sun in summer, and the only tool I own is a spade. I want to eat something this year rather than spend the season building infrastructure. Budget is roughly 150 for everything including plants, and I would rather buy nothing twice.
The thing that will actually decide your first season is water, not soil. Six hours of summer sun on a shallow new bed means daily watering in a dry spell, and the most common failure I see in first year gardens is a good bed abandoned in August. Whatever is left after compost, spend it on a decent hose that reaches, or a watering can big enough that you are not making six trips.
Everyone I know who gave up did it in a hot August, now that you say it. Hose first, prettier things later.
Slight disagreement about the no dig purity. If your patch is currently couch grass or bindweed, cardboard and compost will not stop it, it will simply come up through the seams and you will be fighting it all summer. Identify what is in the lawn first. Ordinary lawn grass, cardboard is fine, running perennial weeds, take the turf off properly or you will lose year one.
My first year I bought fourteen seed packets because they were cheap, sowed everything, and ate almost nothing except courgettes and a heroic amount of chard. Three by two metres is small. Pick five things you actually cook with, buy plug plants for the slow ones like tomatoes rather than seed, and put the salad somewhere you walk past daily so you remember to cut it.
Compost, water, five crops, plugs not seed for anything that needs a head start. Nothing else in year one.
@aquariumdad · 3mo ago · 3 replies
On clay, put the entire budget into organic matter and skip the timber. Lay plain cardboard straight over the grass, no gaps, then fifteen centimetres of compost on top, which for three by two metres is a bit under a cubic metre, and plant into that this spring. A bulk bag delivered is dramatically cheaper per litre than bagged compost and will be most of your 150. The grass dies underneath, the worms deal with the clay for you, and you have spent nothing on sides that would only hold the compost you did not buy.
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@leggy_seedling · 3mo ago
So no digging at all on clay? I assumed I had to break it up first.
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@indent_error_ivy · 3mo ago
Not in year one. Digging wet clay turns it to pottery. If it is still tight next spring, push a fork in and rock it rather than turning it over.
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