Interactive Garden

44 crops

What will you grow?

Grouped by family, because families are what you rotate. Tap one for the full story.

Potatoes

Potatoes and tomatoes

The potato family. Hungry crops that like rich, freshly manured soil.

Potatoes The classic first crop for a new plot: they break up the soil and smother weeds. Tomatoes Nothing from a shop tastes like one picked warm. Outdoors they need your sunniest, most sheltered spot.

Peas and beans

Peas and beans

They take nitrogen from the air and leave it in the soil for whatever follows.

Broad beans The first beans of the year, and one of the few crops you can sow in autumn. Peas Sweet enough to eat straight from the pod, which is where most of them go. Runner beans A wigwam of canes, red flowers and more beans than one household can eat. French beans Dwarf plants that need no canes, and crop within eight weeks of sowing.

Cabbage family

Cabbage family

Leafy crops that want firm, limed soil, and nets against pigeons and butterflies.

Cabbages With the right varieties you can cut a cabbage in every month of the year. Kale The toughest green on the plot. It stands through snow and feeds you in the hungry gap. Broccoli (calabrese) The green broccoli of the supermarket, ready in about twelve weeks. Purple sprouting broccoli It takes nearly a year, and repays you with fresh greens when the plot has little else. Brussels sprouts A long wait and a lot of space, for sprouts that taste nothing like the boiled ones of memory. Cauliflowers The hardest of the family to grow well, and the most satisfying when you do. Swedes A winter root that looks after itself. It is a brassica, so it goes in the cabbage bed. Turnips Fast, and far better small. Pulled at golf-ball size they are sweet enough to eat raw. Radishes Seed to plate in four weeks. The crop to sow with children, or between slower rows.

Roots and onions

Roots

They prefer soil that was manured for a crop the year before, not fresh.

Carrots They want light, stone-free soil that has not been freshly manured. Parsnips Sow in spring, forget about them, and dig them on Christmas morning. Beetroot One of the easiest of all, and you can eat the leaves as well.

Roots and onions

Onion family

Onions, garlic and leeks. Easy, and they store for months.

Onions Push small bulbs into the soil in spring and they do the rest. Shallots Plant one, lift a cluster of eight. Milder than onions, and they keep longer. Garlic It needs a cold spell to form a bulb, so it goes in when everything else is coming out. Leeks They take over the bed when the early potatoes come out, and stand all winter. Spring onions A pinch of seed every few weeks keeps you in salad onions all summer.

Fits anywhere

Salads and leaves

Quick crops that fit in any gap, between and after everything else.

Lettuces Sow a little, often. A whole packet sown at once gives forty lettuces in the same week. Spinach Best in the cool of spring and autumn. In summer heat it runs to seed. Chard Spinach's tougher cousin, with stems in red, yellow and pink. One sowing feeds you for nearly a year.

Fits anywhere

Squash, corn and cucumbers

Tender summer crops. Nothing goes out until the frosts have finished.

Courgettes Two plants are plenty. Three and you will be leaving them on neighbours' doorsteps. Squash and pumpkins They take a lot of room, then sit on a shelf and feed you through the winter. Outdoor cucumbers Ridge cucumbers are shorter and rougher than the shop kind, with far more flavour. Sweetcorn Its sugar starts turning to starch the moment it is picked. Put the pan on before you go to the plot.

Permanent bed

Fruit and perennials

Plant once, pick for years. Give them a permanent bed of their own.

Strawberries The plants crop well for three years. Peg down runners to make new ones for free. Raspberries A row will crop for ten years. Autumn-fruiting kinds are the simplest: cut everything to the ground in February. Blackcurrants One bush gives four or five kilos of fruit, and it asks for almost nothing. Gooseberries The first fruit of the summer, and happy in a shadier corner. Rhubarb Plant it once in a corner and it will outlast your tenancy. Asparagus Two years of patience, then twenty years of spears every May.

Permanent bed

Herbs

A little goes a long way. Most are happy in pots by the back door.

Parsley Slow to come up, then it crops for a year. Basil A plant of the Mediterranean. It sulks at anything below 10°C. Mint Indestructible, and that is the problem. Never let it loose in a bed. Chives A clump at the end of a bed gives mild onion leaves for years, and flowers the bees adore.

Fits anywhere

Flowers for the plot

They bring in bees and hoverflies, and some draw pests away from the veg.

Pot marigolds Orange flowers from June to the frosts. Hoverflies come for them and stay to eat your aphids. Nasturtiums A sacrificial plant. Cabbage white butterflies and blackfly go for it and leave your crops alone. Sweet peas Grow them on the bean canes. They pull in the bees that set your beans, and fill the house with scent. Sunflowers Bees in summer, and seed heads for the finches in autumn. Every plot needs a few.