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My Garden » Forums » General Gardening » Fruit and Vegetables » Vegetables for exposed gardens
Last post 02-07-2008 3:26 PM by digger. 15 replies.
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I am a new gardener trying to grow vegetables in a 4m by 1.5m raised bed in Nottingham. The garden is open to fields and windy, so my attempts keep getting damaged by strong gusts- broad beans, purple sprouting broccoli and runner/climbing beans all flattened! Has anyone any suggestions of good vegetables to try in this setting.I don't have a greenhouse and try to grow organically where possible. Any advice would be much appreciated.
If your veg patch is not too near the edge of your boundary with the fields, you could plant a hedge to stop the wind from ripping right in.
If you don't want to make a hedge - which is sound advice as a wind-break, or put up some fencing. You could try veggies, such as potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions etc rather than veg that thrives above ground.
Yes but onions need to be above ground to grow well. Carrots are a good one to grow as susiq says, It's reet windy here where I live and cabbages and cauliflowers grow very nicely, brussels sprouts might be good as well, but I don't like them so i don't grow those anyway.
I live in a very windy area and plant just about everything. Corn, carrots, tomatoes, beans, beets, onions, green peppers, zucchini, pumpkins. We have no wind barrier and most things seem to deal with it okay. Tomatoes we put large coffee tins (with the bottoms cut out of them) around the plant until it gets a little bigger. Then I put a tomato cage around them. They have to have something to help hold them up or they don't do well. Some people do the same for peppers, and I am sure you could try with a few different veggies. My grandma used to put a fence up next to her beans and they would climb it and stay upright in the wind. Onions, I plant large purple and yellow onions and if you walk on the tops of them the bottoms grow bigger so it doesn't matter if they are damaged by wind. Not sure how different our climates are for growing things so I am sure sure if that is much help or not.
Well Tasha Service, It does sound like you live and garden in a very challenging environment, i'll bet it gets a lot colder where you live than it does in the UK. Do you not have grizzly bears and things in your garden?
Well Digger, it definitely gets cold here in the winter, and very hot in the summer. Winter we average -20 to -30 degrees C. It will get as cold as -45 on occasion and the past couple of days it has been +29 or so. No bears of any kind though, and I am very glad for no grizzlies. Hardly any trees for bears, we live on the prairies, so around us is mostly fields of wheat and other crops. The worst things that I get in my garden are bugs, deer, antelope, bunnies and my cats and dog. The bunnies being the worst and moth balls seem to keep them out. And this year I have a new one that likes my garden, the black bird. Not sure where they all came from but they decided that they like our farm. What do you have in your garden?
You really do have some extremes of temperatures there Tasha, I live in the Lancashire hills and it's either always raining or windy sometimes both. Where i live the main visitors to the garden are cheeky grey squirrels,we have wood pigeons and blackbirds, is it your prairies that are called the bread basket of the world? I would really like to see some photographs if you have any to post my friend. We have deer around us but they are small Roe deer they don't come into the garden but where my OH keeps her horses the deer are always knocking about in the evenings, I think they must like to eat the pasture grass. Once on t.v i saw a creature from N. America it was furry with a long pointed face about as big as a small cat,it wasn't a racoon i think it was called a critter? do you have those in your garden? we have small mice that live in the garden and the potting shed i think they are just field mice, they don't do any harm in really small numbers.
We have actually been getting some rain this year which is nice. Last year we didn't have rain for about 2 months. Which makes for some unhappy farmers. We are the bread basket of the world. I am not sure what a critter is but we do have raccoons and they are much larger than my cats. And there are lots of mice but mostly just in the barn and having lots of cats keep the numbers down a little. We have about 200 cows and some bulls as well. Which comes in handy for fertilizer for my garden and flower beds. I would love to put pictures on here for you but I am not sure how to. Not exactly a genius when it comes to pictures on computers.
http://www.panoramio.com/tags/Gull+Lake/
There are some pictures from Gull Lake, Saskatchewan here. However, there are other Gull Lake's in surrounding provinces. If you type Saskatchewan into the tag line then you will see pictures from all around where I live.
The average rainfall for my area is over 6 feet per year, thankfully we don't get it all in one day! your cows must be for milk then,my friend here has a milk cow farm but I don't know how many milk cows live there, I think your farm will be bigger because you have much more room in Canada then we have here. It would be good if you could post some pictures because I know everyone would like to see them, I had a friend who emigrated to Canada in manitoba is that near to you? do the racoons come into your house? i have seen them on tv breaking up someones house roof so they could get inside. We don't have any big creatures roaming wild in Lancashire but where sue1002, lives they have got some water animals living wild called coypu they came from abroad and now the are on the loose, they make big holes in the river banks, it's good to chat with you my friend, bye for now.
digger: but where sue1002, lives they have got some water animals living wild called coypu they came from abroad and now the are on the loose,
but where sue1002, lives they have got some water animals living wild called coypu they came from abroad and now the are on the loose,
That's the first I've heard of it digger, is there something going on around this area that I don't know about?
It was on tv sue1002, they started off by getting loose in a small area, they were going to be used in the fur trade, anyway they got loose and started wrecking the rivers in the Norfolk broads, they tried to catch them in live catch traps but it was futile, and now they are all over the shop in East Anglia and all over the bit where you live, the bit that sticks out into the sea, by 2020 they will be all over the place.
I didn't see it on tv so that's something I've missed, I haven't seen any coypu around here either. There have been sightings of a big cat (possibly a puma) a few miles from here in recent years though but no-one has caught it yet.
Yes there's supposed to be a big cat loose in Surrey, I haven't seen a coypu either i think they are good at hiding and sneaking about, maybe they only sneak about at night, but the tv said trying to catch them was a hopelessly futile pursuit because there is too many, around here we have a lot of mink there was a fur farm 20 years or more ago and someone let them all loose and now they are in most rivers and on the canal.
There are Cougars around here, although I don't know of anyone seeing any right near our place. I know there were sightings 20 miles from us on either side, so I am sure they are around somewhere. The raccoons don't come into our house, but they do go in and destroy any building that is not in use. They are very destructive. And we do not have dairy cows, our cows are bred every year and then we see the calves at auction sales to whoever wants them. And then we occasionally send one to the butcher so that we can fill our freezer with meat, which is what will happen to all the ones that we sell too. Manitoba is the next province to the east of Saskatchewan. I have only been there once and I was only 7 so I am not really sure what is all there. And I will try to get some pics on here for you to see. Bye for now and I look forward to reading lots more.
