Patio Planting: Grow your own in small spaces
- Beth Griffiths
- May 13, 2020
- 6 min read
I've wanted to grow my own food for a long time so this year I've given it a go. Here's how I got started and how I'm faring now, a few months in.
When I was a small child, my Dad dug a bed in the side of the lawn for me and my elder sister to grow vegetables. For a couple of years we manged to harvest some sweetcorn and straggly carrots. A few perennial herbs clung on for dear life after I teased out their roots far too vigorously... Our biggest success was probably our potato crop - which was grown in an old bin and didn't require the veg bed at all. As is often the case with children, me and my sister were easily distracted. If I remember correctly, this was about the time when we were very fond of making petal water "perfume" and baking bricks of mud in the sun. Once we weren't nurturing our bed properly it only seemed fair to turn it over to my mother, who was dying to plant her potted Magnolia Stellata in the ground.
As I grew up I eyed allotment plots with envy. I always thought to myself "one day". But one day seemed to get further away into the future and I was dying to get stuck in... So last summer I decided that I would try growing some edibles in containers, embracing the limited space and resources at my disposal.
Containers
I decided to use whatever I could find to start planting; old plastic plant pots and trays, disposable coffee/biodegradable cups, plastic and foil food containers, and the cardboard tubes from toilet rolls all can be utilised to grow food. Almost anything can be used to container garden, just make sure to create drainage holes. There are many benefits to repurposing waste products into plant containers:
1. Saves you money! The costs involved in gardening can stack up so making spending reductions is always a good thing.
2. Reduces the amount of packing and unwanted products going to landfill.
3. Reduces the amount of plastic sent to recycling plants. A scarily small amount of the plastic we send to be recycled in the UK is actually ever recycled. Using these plastic containers to grow plants (often over and over again) is a great alternative to recycling.
4. Reduces the amount of compostable products going to landfill. Toilet roll tubes, plant-based coffee cups (now a feature of cafes in Kew gardens and National Trust estates) and pots fashioned from newspaper are all compostable, so once you've finished using them you can throw them in the compost bin! Or alternatively they can be planted into a bed or border.
Collecting black food packaging from friends and neighbours is a great way to start your patio garden as black plastic cannot be picked up by the senors at recycling plants, and therefore does not get recyled at all.
Companion Planting
Before I got started I did a fair amount of reading (as is my way), particularly about organic growing, natural fertilisers and companion planting. Put simply, 'Companion planting' is the principle of growing plants in a way so they are beneifical to the other plants in proximity to them. These benefits include: deterring specific insects (pest control); encouraging specific insects to improve pollination; creating beneficial habitats; increasing crop yields and growing productivity.
For example, carrot plants deter onion flies while onions and leeks deter carrot flies, so growing these in proximity to one-another is a no-brainer. Moreover, Garlic is a general pest repellent and growing borage near your vegetable container will aid pollination.
Compost
General multipurpose compost is probably the best option for container vegetable growing. Soil specifically designed for seed germination and cutting propagation is available from garden centres, but if you're on a tight budget multipurpose serves germination just fine and will see you through from seedling stage to plant adulthood. Vermiculite can be used with multipurpose compost when sowing seeds to aid germination, but again this is not vital. Its important to remember to buy peat free compost to help protect peat bogs and the carbon dioxide they store.
Different plants require different soil types and growing conditions. Strawberry plants, for example, like a loamy soil that's richly supplied with humus, and providing the plants with manure will produce a lot of fruit. Strawberry plants are great container plants as they don't need vast amounts of growing space, and prefer soil that does not get too compacted (limiting oxygen supply to the roots) which can happen by treading up and down allotment rows. I planted my Strawberry (a plant I got very discounted last year after the fruiting season had finished) in a mix largely comprising of decomposed farmyard manure. The remaining chunkier pieces and woody plant-matter from the farmyard manure keep the mix well draining and airy, while also being moisture retaining and nutrient rich.
On the other hand, Rosemary plants thrive in dry and nutrient poor conditions. I took cuttings from my mum's rosemary bush last September and used John Innes seed compost for propagation. The four cuttings rooted fairly quickly and showed tiny signs of growth before the end of autumn. In late March of this year, I then repotted my cuttings in a soil mix containing a large amount of sand and potting grit.
What I decided to grow in my container garden
Last summer/autumn
- Offenham Cabbage (sown last August)
- Chilli pepper (perennial, sown last May)
- Garlic (grown from cloves from a supermarket bought garlic bulb)
- Rosemary (perennial, grown from cuttings)
- Strawberry (perennial, bought as a grown plant)
This spring
- Petit Poi (grown from seed)
- Corriander (grown from seed)
- Basil (grown from seed)
- Rocket (grown from seed)
- Spinach Beet (grown from seed)
- Carrots (grown from seed)
- Beetroot (grown from seed)
- Broccoli (grown from seed)
- Potatoes (grown from sprouted supermarket bought potatoes)
- Leeks (grown from ends of supermarket bought leeks. As I buy and eat leeks I place the ends in a glass of water until roots appear and then plant them into compost)
- Bell peppers (grown from seeds taken from a supermarket bought pepper)
- Spicy Salad Mix (grown from seed - sown thickly to cut and harvest as baby salad leaves, rather than growing heads of lettuce)
- Various squash (grown from seed taken from various bought fruit. Pumpkin and squash plants need a lot of room so aren't the best choice for small/container gardens. I've grown a number of young plants to then choose one to grow on)
A few other things to think about...
- Composting: I know that composting might not be a priority when gardening in a small space, but composting reduces garden and kitchen waste going to landfill AND could save you money on compost/mulch in the future. I decided to start two different forms of composting this year: aerobic composting and vermiculture composting. Aerobic composting involves introducing air to the organic matter to help it break down. This is the type of composting that involves the most effort as it requires turning every few days for it to decompose well. As the scraps are being broken down by the present micro-organisms, heat is produced. If the composting scraps get too dry or aren't getting aerated enough your compost bin will begin to develop a bad smell. Vermiculture composting or vermicomposting involves worms. Brandling worms (also known as tiger worms and red wriggler worms) are a species of worm that thrive in decomposing vegetation, and can be bought online for home composting. I made my vermiculture bin by drilling air holes in the bottom of a small recycling bin - et voila. This form of composting takes much longer than "hot composting" but vermicastings (the substance produced) contains much more nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus than ordinary compost.
- Rain water collection: I almost solely water my plant containers using rain water collected in a water butt. The butt collects water from the roof and guttering, and stores it until it's needed. Like compost bins, not everyone will have space for a large water butt. However, if you can squeeze in some kind of rain water collection your plants and wallet will love it.
Tips from one amateur gardener to another
- Remember to water regularly. Containers dry out a lot faster than you might think.
- Be ambitious (but try not to get disappointed if things don't go to plan).
- Grow what you like to eat.
- Don't be afraid. Just give it a go and see what happens!
I'm not going to feed the five thousand with the veg I'm growing this year, but I'm learning a lot for future gardening. And I'm really enjoying it.
If you've taken the time to read this, thank you! - Beth, thedaftduck x
You can check out my shop on nuMONDAY, where you'll find one-off pieces and made to order knits! And follow daftduck_ on instagram for work in progress updates, house-plant pics and vegetable growing!#shopsmall #stopthrowawayfashion
#patioplanting #smallspacegardening #tinygarden #containergarden #growyourown #vegetablegrowing #amateurgardener #consciousgardening #ecogardening
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