How my vegetable patch got way out of control

Before: So ordered, who knew what it was going to become

When I first planted my vegetable patch many months ago now it was neat, it was ordered, there was visible brown earth between plants.  Fast forward and somehow it has turned into this:

Oh dear, not good.  Notice the fuchsia sticks really performing in their given task.  

Mowing the lawn should be fun around this lot

That is what I think we would describe as being a vegetable patch that only a mother could love, or a mess in plain terms.  Strangely one moment it seemed fine, and then chaos erupted almost over night.  I went down to check on progress and found not only sugar snap peas forming but also growing old and tough hidden thick in a tangle of leaves without me even realising.  I didn’t put in all that effort at the beginning to have it get away from me now.  My broad beans were in a sorry state flopped all over the lawn, early beans rotting gently into the grass.  Mmmm nice.  I didn’t want it to be this way, I envisaged a vegetable patch beautifully ordered and spaced out as it was at Hampton, but inevitably being an incredibly untidy person, my vegetable patch has mirrored this.

I have identified two main reasons for this current predicament:

1.     I have wedged a ‘patch’ into a fairly small area as space is a commodity in my garden in seriously short supply, so I tend to at least shave 3 inches off the recommended distance between each plant because when small this seems an absurdly generous amount.  I have been known to dig seedlings up having finished settling them in to reposition them closer.  I forget that they will grow and expand and more than fill that space and effectively create a pea hedge, with the beans hidden deep in the thicket making them impossible to find.  On that note, why do peas have to be green? There’s not a war on so why the need for such camouflage?  Im not aware of any pest being a particular pea connoisseur, and I can’t bloody see them!  Half the problem is failing to spot the peas in time and only finding them after a full body search of the plant when its old and wrinkled like your grandma.

2.     I took the mothers advice.  Always a massive mistake and yet I never learn.  She suggested using old fuchsia stems as pea sticks to save money on proper canes.  This works when your peas are four inches tall and are still keeping themselves to themselves.  Its when they get bigger and start wandering all over the joint, wrapping their little curly tendrils round anything they can get a hold on that problems arise.  The small side sticks that fuchsias inevitably have just add bulk to an already bulky situation, padding out the hedge and providing a real supportive frame for the peas to interweave through horizontally.  Plus after a certain point the pea plant weighs as much as the fuchsia stick does and the two just sag gently into the lawn.  Or topple heavily across other plants as in the case of the broad beans, who were doing a super job of supporting themselves at the beginning but after heavy rain they all felt in need of a little lay down. 

The necessary equipment gathered and ready for battle.  I know these photos are the height of visual excitement but how do you jazz up a veg patch?

After: Not that it exactly looks that ordered even now but at least everything is growing in the right direction now

After discovering numerous sugar snaps that had already had their day I decided this couldn’t go on and bought at least 50 proper bamboo canes from the garden centre and armed with scissors and a huge ball of twine went down there and started unraveling the mess.  It took a solid few hours to gently (ie. with scissors) persuade separate plants apart and back into an upright position.  Some had to be staked at an angle so there is now a flowerpot over the end of a cane protruding over the lawn to prevent the piercing of eyeballs.  I would definitely suggest that this is not the way to do it and proper staking at planting stage is the way forward.  Next year having already got the tools to hand I hope not to get into this kind of mess again.