Advice needed please for a novice!

Hi all,

I really need your advice.  I have got the following garden (which, to my shame, I have hardly touched since we bought the house 2 years ago).  I now want to assign part of it to growing my own veggies etc.

Now, before I get totally berated for the state of my garden, the reason for wanting to do something with it is because of my little son, who I am sure will enjoy planting and watcing the plants grow.

If you take a line from the right hand edge of the shed back to the camera, the area to the left is the area I want to use as it gets the most sun.

My request, is how and where to start??  Any help would be much appreciated, and if you live close to me, I will get you a beer in!

Many thanks in advance

James (and Leo)

Thanks!  The compost heap is already started (about 4 months ago), it is behind the camera!.

Hmmm salad stuff.  Nice idea, are there any particular types that would do well being planted this late?

Ta

James

Since this is a garden you really want it to be attractive as well as productive so you could be a bit different to an allotment grower.
You've got a fence (left of shot) so why not grow some espalier or cordon fruit on against the fence.  Leave a narrow path before putting in beds for the veg.  It's difficult to work out how large the space is, but it doesn't look too big. To maximise yield from space, a couple of strawberry barrels - there was a good link to a supplier on the forum, use the search button - and all kiddies like strawberries.
Since you've let the garden go a bit wild, I think deep beds would be best for you. They are easier to control and weed. You can do a bed in half an hour so it doesn't seem such a huge job - that you keep putting off.

Thanks for the advice guys.  I have been working on the garden in the evenings this week, as you can see, progress is starting to be made!  The part I have dug (about 6' x 8') was just an "advance" foray to see what the soil was like.  Heavy is the answer, so I an going to get a load of rotted down manure and mix that in.  One good point though is that there are a huge amount of worms, so that is nice!

The log "fence" had been created by removing them from their previous homes (you can see them by the mound and around the cherry tree on the first pic.

I am doing this in stages, I now need to hack back all of the vegetation to the fence, also, I need to re-landscape the mound near the shed (I think this came about when the pond was installed, as that is now going to be removed, the earth can jolly well move back!

Oh, and the conifer has gone as well, bloomin thing was like a triffid.

Again, thanks for the advice, it is good to know that there are people out there that can lend a virtual hand! (shame that virtual hand cannot do any digging!)

Before :



Progress being made :