Last updated
05 February 2012
Quest for the Good Life 
Vegetables
For the 2011 growing season we followed the wartime Ministry of Agriculture grow for winter plan. We continue this in 2012. The plan was produced during the war to help home gardeners get the most out of their plot of land and to have supplies of vegetables throughout the year, especially the winter months.
This three page document gives all the information the gardener needs to grow vegetable crops. It includes sowing times, number of rows, plant spacing and harvest times. A valuable document then and of tremendous help today.
Our vegetable growing this year will be based on this plan. For more information on the planning of the garden using this idea, go to our Planning pages. For information about the type of crop rotation used in the guide, go to our Crop Rotation pages.
In the planning stage we looked at the guides grouping of vegetables:-
This gives us the information we need to space out the plot and buy the right amount of seeds to complete the plan. Our garden will operate at about 30% less than the plan but row numbers will remain the same (just shorter rows).
Page 3 of the Dig for Victory plan shows the full list of vegetables. This conveniently
becomes our shopping list:-
This does not mean we cannot and will not grow some other crops, but this will form the heart of what we do. It is an experiment to see how successful it is, but we have our suspicions that it will be quite effective.
With the sowing times printed for all of these crops too, you have a ready made sowing calendar. We simply put the sowing times into our diaries so as we work through the year the relevant seeds are sown, or plants transplanted. Nice and simple.
The earliest activities start in February with things like Broad Beans, Onions, Parsnips and Shallots, weather permitting of course!
So to the garden centre to buy some seeds!