Grow Your Own Magazine

Can anyone give me a clue as to what likes to grow in stony ground? My brother has a large garden and last year decided to grow some veg. Spuds did ok and he tried courgettes which weren't all that. Is there anything that doesn't mind a bit of competition?

Hi SimplyPotty, welcome to the vine.

I have horribly stoney ground, clay with lots of flint. I don't seem to have too much trouble but the soil preparation is difficult for some things. Carrots and Parsnips need deep fairly stone free ground to grow straight and well.

I make a bed on top of the ground and fill it with sifted soil for the carrots and for Parsnips deep holed made with an iron bar worked round in the soil to give a funnel shape and then filled with fine soil before planting the parsnips. This year the longest one was over a metre long!

Some other things that need lots of moisture could have a trench dug and filled with compost or anything that will retain the moisture as the stoney ground usually drains quickly. Iv'e used cardboard, old newspaper and old grass cuttings as well as compost.

I take out any large stones that come to the surface and tend to start things off in modules so that I have plants to go in instead of sowing straight into the ground

It's trial and error, best of luck. The more the soil is worked the better it gets. I can't believe that the soil I am working now is the same stuff that I dug with a pick axe 4 years ago!

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Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet