Beginners Guide To Growing Veg

Tuesday, 04 March 2025

It’s the perfect time of year to start thinking about growing veg but it needn’t be a daunting prospect. If you have always fancied it but not known where to start then here is our beginners guide to growing veg…

You don’t need to jump in at the deep end and buy loads of special kit and have lots of knowledge – there are lots of ways to make it easier and cheaper and accessible to all.

Buy Seed Potatoes

We love growing potatoes as they are easy to grow and you can access some lovely varieties to suit how you use them. The easiest thing to do when it comes to tatties is to buy seed potatoes. Once you’ve purchased your selection, place them in a cool, bright area of your house (old egg cartons or cardboard trays are perfect for this) and let the “eyes” grow before carefully planting them deep into your soil.

Buy Onion Sets

We’ve never grown onions from seed, instead choosing the simple option of buying onion sets. These mini onions will grown into a big onion in a few months time. It’s a little early yet but in a few weeks time plant them straight into your veg beds leaving the spacing detailed on the packaging.

Buy Veg Plants

This is a great time of year to get some veg plants that have already been started for you and at cheap prices as they are still quite small. We prefer buying our tomatoes like this as we can choose several different varieties rather than buying a pack of seeds and getting hundreds of the same plants. Chillis are also great to buy as a little plant.

Buy Seeds

There are some veg that are super easy to grow from seed. There are some which we have started off in seeds trays just now to give them a head start (such as cauliflower, kale, broccoli and courgette) whilst others we will just sow directly into the veg beds in a few weeks (such as spring onion, salad leaves, radish, spinach, beetroot etc).

If you don’t have seed trays then yogurt pots, butter tubs, juice bottles etc will all suffice, just make sure you add drainage. Carefully pot on your seedlings as they get bigger and then acclimatise them to the outdoors before eventually planting in your veg beds once the risk of frost has past (normally May in Scotland.)

 

Don’t try and do too much when you first start out. Pick something you like to eat and focus on that and once you get into the swing of things add more to your repertoire. The sense of satisfaction and the wonderful taste will make it worth the effort.

If you still need some convincing read our blog 5 Reasons To Grow Fruit & Veg for more inspiration.

Happy gardening!

Vialii