Already making plans for next year?

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 15 June 2011 in growing | 5 comments

I know it’s not even midsummer yet but I’m not the only one making growing plans for next year, am I?

• More strawberries: As I said the other day, our current strawberries should give us a long season of fruit but strawberries are so damn useful that I’d like to expand our crop. While hopefully our current ones will send out runners which will we can cultivate, I’m thinking about adding another variety to result in more of a summer glut for turning into jam etc. I’ll be reading the Which results reposted in brief by Gillian on My Tiny Plot for inspiration. They’ll be planted in the “mini forest garden” beds to add more low height crops. (The silver birch bed is doing very well, btw – four levels so far, a fifth to go in, and the strawberries would be a sixth.)
• More soft fruit bushes: John’s dad has been building us a Lily-dog and hen containment fence on the shared boundary between our garden & our neighbours – and it’s made me think more about the stuff on that border. I’m going to pull up two shrubs and replace them with fruit bushes. I nearly bought a couple of (presumably 2 year old) redcurrants for cheap at Focus at the weekend but think I’d prefer more raspberries.
• Another cherry tree: Just near those bushes is a taller treelet, which everyone asks is fig because the leaves look like fig leaves. I don’t think it is – and even if it was, it’s not the right climate here to it’s a bit pointless. So I think I’ll replace that with a cherry – perhaps a sweet cherry to complement the sour morello we’ve already got.
• Even more fruit bushes or trees: On the lowest level of the fence, there is a narrow bed underneath the fence – that could be used for more fruit bushes or even espalier fruit trees.
• Another raised bed? We currently have two semi circular raised-with-stone beds with a space inbetween them. I usually fill the space with containers but it would be more efficient to wall the front of the space into a third raised bed. The builders who’ve just finished work on our house freed up a load of suitable stone so I might do this one this year. It would be a deep, south-east facing bed — even if it’s not vast, it could certainly be useful.
• A long bed at the front? I meant to make the front garden more useful this year – it’s currently being used as a dumping ground for non-useful rubble (from the building work) and random stuff from use clearing out the garage — not quite what I imagined! In time for next year, I’m going to try to build a really long bed along the side of the porch (about 4m). I’ve got some salvaged long lengths of decking which would be fine to use from both a structural and aesthetic point of view – even if it’s just for perennial herbs, it’ll be useful.
• More shade-loving things: I meant to start making better use of the shaded bits of our garden this year, but didn’t get around to it. I wish I’d put in some rhubarb, and some more herbs.
• And that’s all before thinking about what annuals I’ll grow…!

Are you getting ahead of yourself too?