For beginner gardeners and for those who want a simple life there are some low maintenance herbs & vegetable seeds for a productive vegetable plot. All vegetables require a certain amount of care & protection and if you are well prepared & equipped then the work load becomes much easier.

The low maintenance vegetable seeds are those who are happy in most soils, require little care, pruning or supporting and vegetables that are not at risk of pest attacks on a regular basis. Some good vegetables to get started with include:

• Courgettes
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Potatoes
• Kale
• Spinach

If you want to get started with your own plot, then you could start small or choose only a few different vegetable seeds to grow for the first season until you get the hang of the basic techniques. As you become more experience in spotting pests and other issues you could consider expanding your range to plants to more exotic varieties such as carrots & tomatoes

Courgettes are an easy vegetable seed to start with. You can start the seeds indoors in mid-February and then transplant the plants outdoors in early May. So long as the soil is fertile and the plants are kept moist during the summer you are guaranteed a good harvest by July

All lettuce types are easy to grow, and there is a lettuce for any time of year. You can grow them in small raised beds, in window boxes or out in your vegetable plot. Slugs and snails are the biggest problem but there is an endless range of control options for slugs including ashes, egg shells, organic gel barriers, wool pellets and of course slug pellets. Sow a few vegetable seeds every few weeks for a continual harvest of lettuce throughout the year

Onion sets are a great way to grow onions. Sets are very easy to sow as they are large enough to handle and space evenly apart with no vegetable seeds going to waste. Sets are also much less susceptible to blotting this means that you are unlikely to lose any onions in times of dry, hot weather

Potatoes are a really great vegetable to grow. You should sow your seed potatoes once the last frost has passed; generally this would be from mid-March onwards. The easiest potatoes to grow are the first earlies as these are the quickest to mature & require the least amount of space to grow

Spinach & kale and real though veggies that will put up with most growing conditions and can be grown well into October and longer if you have adequate frost protection. Kale will grow big so give is space to spread. Spinach can be harvested slowly over the summer months by just cutting away a few leaves as you need them

To ensure your vegetable plot is easy to maintain you should put in the hard graft early and prepare the soil well. This really is all about removing the weeds and weed roots from the soil and then removing the small and medium sized stones. The first year of ground preparing on a vegetable plot is always the hardest put after a few years the workload gets a lot easier and you can even introduce a ‘no-dig’ system on your plot, but this is only achievable once the perennial weeds have been removed.

A lot of the allotmenteers at Powerstown use The Garden Shop. They have an impressive selection of seeds which are classified by group which is very handy when considering  crop rotation on your allotment.