The “recycled” garden uses recycled compost in four large plastic storage boxes on a 1200×800 pallet in my back garden. It’s located against a south-facing wall that receives a respectable amount of sunlight and my intention is to use it to grow crops that it would be useful to have close to the house. Priorities for this garden include tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers (in high summer), and it would be useful to have a variety of leaf salads (some of which may do better in the full shade of the front garden).

In the meantime, though, it seems a shame to have all that compost sitting there doing nothing, so my early sowings in this garden are to include:

- a box of carrots, for lifting around end May
- a box of spring onions interplanted with radishes
- a box of salad leaves (lettuce-based)
- a box of wild rocket for short term harvest and later transplanting

Those will occupy the space from now through until some time in May. In a perfect world a successional box would be sown every month, with a judicious mixture of carrots, beets, salad leaves, etc., but that may be optimistic in terms of space and resources.

It is anticipated that after about two months the wild rocket will be dug up en masse and transplanted somewhere else, most likely into the front garden. The spring onions will either stay put or be transplanted into a fresh box and the carrots will fast be approaching harvest. At this point, two boxes at the back will be repurposed to cherry tomatoes (perhaps in ring culture pots), maybe combined with a couple of pepper plants. It might also be worth trying beetroot in containers if space allows.

Further updates to follow as this gradually takes shape…