There is a particular kind of gardening that happens where the hills rise, the walls run dry and grey across the slopes, and the wind arrives with opinions. A dales garden is rarely generous. It is often small, sloping, stony, and hemmed in by a wall or a hedge that casts more shade than you would like. And yet some of the most satisfying growing I have done has been in exactly these plots, at four hundred feet and upwards, where the season is short but the soil, once you coax it, is honest and full of heart.

Read Your Plot Before You Sow

Every dales garden has its own microclimate, and the first job is to learn yours. Note where frost settles first on an autumn morning. Watch how the wind funnels between buildings. Find the corner that stays damp until April and the border that bakes against a south-facing wall.

Upland plots generally sit two to four weeks behind the lowlands. Your last frost may fall in late May, and the first autumn frost can arrive by mid-October. That gives you perhaps twenty weeks of real growing weather, so the varieties you choose must work hard and finish fast. Choose quick-maturing crops, sow in succession, and accept that tomatoes and sweetcorn will always be a gamble. Better to grow a magnificent crop of kale than a sad, green handful of peppers.

Wind is the great thief of the dales. It shreds leaves, dries out soil, and snaps tall stems. A permeable barrier — a hazel hurdle, a woven willow screen, a row of lavender or beech — slows the wind without creating damaging eddies. Solid fences are worse than nothing, as the turbulence they create can be fiercer than the wind itself.

Build Soil That Holds Water and Warmth

Dales soil tends to be thin, leached by rain and stony with gritstone or limestone. It warms slowly and drains fast on slopes. The answer is organic matter, and lots of it, worked in each autumn and used as a mulch through summer.

• Spread well-rotted manure or garden compost in October and let the worms do the digging.
• Mulch with straw, grass clippings or leafmould to hold moisture and suppress weeds.
• Lime only if you have acid ground and are growing brassicas — test first, as most dales soils sit near neutral.
• Work in grit or sharp sand where drainage is poor, and build raised beds where the water table sits high.

Raised beds earn their keep in upland gardens. They warm earlier in spring, drain freely in wet winters, and let you control the soil completely. Even a bed thirty centimetres deep makes a difference to germination dates.

Crops That Earn Their Place

Hardy brassicas are the backbone of a dales plot. Kale is the obvious starting point, and rightly so: cavolo nero and Red Russian both shrug off wind and frost, cropping from September right through to March. A row of curly kale will feed you for months on very little attention.

Purple sprouting broccoli and winter cabbage follow the same logic, sown in late spring and planted out in July for a harvest in the hungry gap. Leeks are another stalwart, standing in the ground through the worst of the weather until you want them.

Potatoes do well in the dales provided you keep the frost off the haulms. Plant first earlies such as Rocket or Sharpe's Express in April under fleece, and maincrops like Sarpo Mira, which has real resistance to blight — a mercy in a wet summer. Earth them up generously; a late frost on exposed ridges can blacken a whole row in a night.

Roots suit cool ground. Swede, turnip, beetroot and carrots all appreciate a plot that never gets too hot. Herbs, too, are made for this climate: thyme, chives, sorrel, parsley and winter savory all grow happily against a warm wall, and most will stand through the winter without protection.

Make Use of Every Warm Corner

In a small garden, vertical and sheltered space is precious. Train climbing beans up wigwams of hazel and place them against a south-facing wall. Use cold frames and cloches to start salad and radish early, and to harden off brassicas before planting.

Pots and troughs by a sunny doorstep will grow cut-and-come-again salad, rocket, land cress and spring onions all summer. Move them against the house wall in autumn to extend the season by a few valuable weeks. A windowsill of herbs costs nothing and saves a fortune.

The Dales Growing Calendar

• February–March: start leeks, onions and early brassicas indoors; chit potatoes in a cool, light room.
• April–May: plant out hardened brassicas under fleece; sow carrots, beetroot and salad; earth up potatoes.
• June–July: sow winter kale, purple sprouting broccoli and swede for the cold months ahead.
• August–September: plant out winter crops, mulch heavily, and sow land cress for autumn picking.
• October–January: harvest kale, leeks and roots; spread manure and plan next year's rotation.

Work With the Weather, Not Against It

The secret to a productive dales garden is not fighting the climate but choosing plants that like it. Grow what thrives in cool, breezy, short-season conditions, protect what needs shelter, and let the rest take its chances. A garden that gives you kale in January, new potatoes in June and a bowl of sorrel soup in between is a generous one, however small the plot. Keep the soil rich, keep the wind off, and the hills will do the rest.