How I built my dream kitchen garden!

This week I am skipping around with excitement that my kitchen garden is ready for me to plant!

It has been a long time in the making, I think I started talking to Simon about this at least five years ago. There's been lots of different ideas and lots of different plans, but it is finally here and I'm thrilled with it.

I'm just so excited that I now get to grow lots of things that we can eat and enjoy as a family. And I think Ruben has done a brilliant job interpreting my dream for it!

I've been dreaming about my kitchen garden for so many years. There's been a lot of delays, a lot of umming and erring, and a lot of procrastinating about it. But it's finally here. I want to get the children involved in the process of planting as well, because I think they might be more adventurous with the vegetables that they eat if they've witnessed the process of growing them, from seed or tiny little plants, into something that we can cook and eat and enjoy as a family.

I had originally wanted to have raised beds over by my greenhouse, but, by having this area I've got so much more planting space, and creating the kitchen garden in the way that we have done has been cost-effective. I priced up how much it would cost for raised beds and this has come in so much cheaper. All of the wood came from a local company Sussex Timber - and the whole build has come in spot on budget, which obviously I'm pleased about!

I've used Charles Dowding's no-dig method, where you just put cardboard down on top of the grass with compost on top of that and plant straight into it. I don't have to wait, we haven't had to get machinery in, and we haven't had to dig. It's actually been a really straightforward process. I got 90% of the cardboard boxes from our local Tescos - I think I drove them crazy every time they saw me coming! Then I've simply put scaffold planks in between the beds so I can walk easily amongst the growth.

I've got the most wonderful arch, which I'm looking forward to growing things up that we can eat and enjoy! Although we have an abundance of blackberries in the hedgerows, I think blackberries growing up and over the arch will look pretty. I might also put some honeysuckle somewhere along the perimeter fence.

I'm going to have a mixture of vegetables, but also some cut flowers that we can have in the house and enjoy.

The fruit cage section behind is bird proof, which is brilliant. I've already got a fairly established crop of redcurrants at the back, and I've just planted my strawberries, and there'll be various other things to come.

I'm going to take my time with the planting, as I think it's really important not to rush things. So it will grow and I will add things as we develop and time allows. I don't want to over face myself this year with taking on too much and planting loads of things and then being overwhelmed.

I think it's really important just to grow things that we're going to eat and enjoy. So I've got my broad beans in one of the first beds, I've got asparagus over behind one of the stables in a raised bed which I'm excited about, although I have got to wait a good few years before we can harvest that!

I'm going to be growing potatoes, spinach, peas, carrots, broccoli. I've got arches on the right-hand side of the garden, which are for netting so I can have my broccoli under this section here. So there really will be a variety of things that we can enjoy eating as a family!

I love my sweet peas, and I'm putting a few cutting flowers in here as well as vegetables because I'm not going to be filling this with veg completely this year. I'm just going to start slowly and fill it up over time.

I've got the most wonderful teepees for the sweet peas to climb which a friend made. We did a swap, fish for teepees!

Inside my fruit cage, I've got two different varieties of strawberries. I've got a Ruby Ann and Elan and I've grouped them by type so I can tell them apart easily. I've also used one of my trusty chalk markers to remind myself of what they are!

I hope you've enjoyed following along with the build of our kitchen garden as much as I have, do let me know if you have any tips or tricks of your own for growing your own fruit and veg, I'd love to hear them!

Love, Charlie x