Byline: Wendy Priesnitz
No space for a garden? Don’t worry: Everything from salad greens and savory herbs to luscious fruits and vegetables can be as close as your patio, window box, balcony or rooftop.
Small space gardening can be rewarding and satisfying. Working in a small space requires creativity and ingenuity. It appeals to many types of people–those with limited garden space, parents introducing young children to gardening, apartment-dwellers with only a balcony to grow on, disabled or elderly people who require high accessibility and low work, busy people who enjoy recreational gardening but who don’t have a lot of time, novice gardeners who want to start small.
If it Holds Soil, it’s a Garden
If you have a very small space, or want your garden to be relatively mobile, try planting in containers.
With few exceptions–such as com and pumpkins–everything edible that’s grown in a traditional garden can be raised in a container. Not enough time to garden? Except for the need for increased watering, container gardening is lot less work than conventional gardening.
A container garden can often provide the ultimate in convenience, allowing a cook to have essential herbs close at hand. The mobility of container gardening also makes it easy to rearrange and resculpt your garden and to add new elements of interest and beauty.
You can grow plants in virtually anything that holds some soil and has holes in the bottom for drainage. We have seen old bathtubs, 20-liter plastic containers with the tops cut off, baskets of various sizes lined with garbage bags to hold the water in, milk cartons for seedlings, old milk pails, even a discarded work boot!
The container’s size is dictated by the amount of space the plant’s roots will require. Shallow-rooted crops like lettuce, peppers, radishes, herbs and most annuals are happiest in a container at least six inches in diameter with an eight-inch soil depth. Bushel baskets, half barrels, wooden tubs or large pressed paper containers are ideal for growing tomatoes, squash, pole beans, cucumbers and deep-rooted perennials.
Setting the container on a solid surface, such as a cement or patio floor, reduces drainage. Raising the container one or two inches off the floor by setting it on blocks of wood will solve this problem.
A fairly lightweight soil mix is needed for container gardening. Dirt straight from the garden–especially if it has any clayshould not be used in a container because it is too heavy and holds too much moisture when wet, resulting in too little air for the roots. Packaged potting soil will work or mix your own with one part peat moss, one part garden loam, and one part clean coarse (builder’s) sand. Lime may also be needed to bring the pH to around 6.5. In any case, a soil test is helpful in determining nutrient and pH needs, just as in a large garden. Add organic fertilizer such as bloodmeal, ground peanut cake, alfalfa meal or bonemeal.
Nearly all vegetable plants will grow better in full sunlight than in shade. However, leafy crops such as lettuce, cabbage, greens, spinach and parsley can tolerate more shade than root crops such as radishes, beets, turnips and onions. The root vegetables can stand more shade than those which bear fruit, such as cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. One advantage to container gardening is mobility. Container gardening makes it possible to position vegetables in areas where they can receive the best possible growing conditions. Or put the pots on a cart or wagon and move them around to follow the sun!
Planting decorative containers is a fun and creative experience. Use several varieties of flowers and foliages in pleasing combinations of color and texture, even combining flowers with food plants that have attractive foliage.
Design the container plantings for shade or sun, combining only those flowers that have similar cultural requirements. Include plants for height (e.g., Shasta daisies or geraniums), plants for spread (e.g., petunias,) and plants to grow down over the edges of the containers, like trailing foliage plants and those that flower, such as hanging fuchsias and verbena.
Plant too much rather than too little. Err on the side of extra plants for a lush, full effect. But to compensate for extra plants, fertilize and water properly. Water abundantly throughout the summer.
Pay particular attention to watering container plants. Because the volume of soil is relatively small, containers can dry out very quickly, especially if they are small and located on a concrete patio in full sunlight. Daily or twice-daily watering may be necessary. Apply water until it runs out the drainage holes.
Water clay pots and other porous containers more frequently, as they allow additional evaporation through the sides of the pots. If the soil appears to be getting excessively dry (plants wilting every day is one sign), group the containers together so that the foliage creates a canopy to help shade the soil and keep it cool.
Check containers at least once a day and twice on hot, dry or windy days. Feel the soil to determine whether it is damp. Mulching and windbreaks can help reduce water requirements for containers.
Liquid seaweed emulsion is one of the best sources of micronutrients and a real soil and plant health booster. Use some in the watering can every two weeks.
Beyond Containers
While container gardens are great for those with no land, if you live in a house or townhouse, you may be able to go bigger. Say you have a few square feet of garden space–perhaps the border around a patio, a section of your front yard or even a rooftop–then you can garden a bit bigger and more permanently than containers will allow.
One of the easiest ways to garden on any size property is the no-dig, no-till method, where you let nature do the work instead of your back. Patricia Lanza’s “lasagna gardening” is a good example of this simple organic method, scaled to the small garden. Lanza travels the continent describing this technique, which she developed when she ran a country inn in the Catskills and created a series of gardens from which to feed her guests. She begins by laying sheets of newspaper on a garden bed (or bed-to-be, because there is no need to remove the sod), then adding alternating layers of whatever organic material is available, such as compost, grass clippings, chopped up leaves and peat moss. The need to dig is eliminated by the earthworms that are attracted to this warm, dark, moist environment created by the first layer of newspaper. They work their way through the material, converting it into rich garden soil by consuming, digesting and eliminating the organic materials.
Another innovative method for the miniature-scale organic gardener is the square-foot garden, popularized by retired engineer Mel Bartholomew in his 1981 book of the same name. The idea is to create a grid of small garden box frames no wider than four feet, and six to eight inches deep. The length is not as important, although Bartholomew recommends beginning with one four-by-four-foot frame. You can, of course, go smaller. A two-foot-by-two-foot works well on patios, for instance. Frames can be made from almost any material except treated wood. Fasten the boards together with screws.
Now, on top of each frame place a permanent grid that divides the box into one foot squares. That will allow you to intensively grow up to 16 different types of plants in a well-organized, easy to manage mini garden. Grids can be made from almost any material: wood, plastic strips, old Venetian blinds, etc. Use screws or rivets to attach them where they cross.
Fill with a light-weight planting mix and plant seeds according to package instructions. Bartholomew says that one four by four-foot box will grow more than an eight- by 10-foot conventional garden.
You can have a small square-foot garden on a balcony, a bigger one on a rooftop. Check the weight considerations for your rooftop, and it might also be wise to check the local by-laws. A unit measuring 16 square feet and 12 inches deep will weigh somewhere around 300 kilograms (660 pounds), depending on the soil, the water content, etc.
Your beds could stain the cement underneath, so place them in big wooden trays covered with two thicknesses of heavy-duty plastic. If you place them directly on dirt or grass, put down some used carpet squares, landscape plastic or newsprint to smother the weeds.
Trellises
No matter what the style of your small garden, you’ll want to grow up. Trellises are a great way to help dense plantings get +their share of sunlight and to conserve ground space. Just don’t forget to place them where they won’t shade shorter sun-loving plants.
You can easily construct a simple hoop of electrical conduit pipe, bamboo or other materials. Plant the ends firmly in the ground and attach some wire or string from the top to the ground for the plants to cling to or be tied to. Go as high as you can and crops like cucumbers, beans and even tomatoes will appreciate the support.
Long branches or sticks can also be lashed together at the top in tee-pee fashion to provide support for trailing plants. Or simply allow trailers to wind their way around the stems of their taller, sturdier cousins.
One innovative urban gardener I once knew had a lush and plentiful garden growing on a “tower” fashioned from chickenwire and cardboard. Make a column out of chickenwire, about a foot across, overlapped and fastened together with wire. Line the inside with corrugated cardboard. Stand it on end, place a piece of plastic pipe in the center, fill the pipe with sand and stones, and pack the space between the pipe and the cardboard with soil. Remove the pipe and you have a tower of soil with a center core for watering. All that’s left it to cut slits in the cardboard–two inches long and six inches apart–and plant seeds through the slits. Place it in the sun and water often.
Less is More
Small gardens have specific design challenges. Basically, follow the less-is-more principle. Focus on detail and resist the temptation to add too much variety. Instead, plant lots of the same or similar varieties in order to create a feeling of lushness, rather than confusing and overwhelming the eye with many different varieties. For the same reason, try and limit yourself to two or three colors in addition to green. You’ll also get more impact if you stay within the same color family.
Try to design curves into your small garden in order to add a sense of motion and flow. Adding something as simple as a curved brick or stone walkway or curved flower bed will not only add an element of interest but will make the space seem larger. So will dividing your garden into “rooms” by the use of retaining walls, arbors and trellises, walkways, a water feature, a raised sitting platform or gazebo or just an interesting collection of decorative rocks or a special grouping of plants, perhaps in similar style containers. But again, remember that less is more. You want to create a sense of calm and unity, not clutter.
Any small space will benefit from the use of illusion. Using white paint on a wall or fence can extend the space, while painting a corner black could create the illusion of a shadow leading to another part of your garden. Similarly, careful use of mirrors or pools of water can seem to extend the depth of your garden.
Whether your style is formal or casual, whether you want to feed your family or create an oasis of calm and relaxation, bigger isn’t always better. A tiny garden can provide as much enjoyment as an acre, with a lot less work.
Possible Plants for Potting
Vegetables:
Bush Beans Beets Carrots Cabbage Swiss Chard Cucumbers Eggplant Kale Leaf Lettuce Green Onions Bell Pepper Summer Squash Tomatoes Cherry Tomatoes Turnips
Herbs: Anise Basil Caraway Chervil Chives Coriander Dill Fennel Marjoram Mint Parsley Summer Savory Tarragon Thyme Winter Savory
Fruits: Blackberries Blueberries Raspberries Strawberries
Flowers: Ageratum Alyssum Begonia Coleus Dusty Miller Geranium Impatiens Marigold Nasturtium Pansy Petunia Verbena Zinnia Yarrow Columbine Lupine Rudbeckia Shasta Daisy
Small Space Gardening Resources
Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces: A Layering System for Big Results in Small Gardens and Containers by Patricia Lanza (Rodale Books, 2002) The Edible Container Garden: Growing Fresh Food in Small Spaces by Michael Guerra (Fireside, 2000)
McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers by Rose Marie Nichols McGee, Maggie Stuckey (Workman Publishing, 2002)
How to Grow Organic Vegetables in Containers (… Anywhere!): What You Can Grow, Where You Can Grow, How You Set Up, Everything You’ll Need by Eileen Logan (Writers Club Press, 2002)
Growing Herbs in Containers: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-179 by Sal Gilbertie, Maggie Oster (Storey Publishing, 1998)
Movable Harvests–The Simplicity & Bounty of Container Gardens by Chuck Crandall & Barbara Crandall (Chapters, 1995)
Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew (Rodale Books, 1981 )
What's Wrong? Symptoms Cause Solution Plants tall, spindly Insufficient light Move container to and unproductive area receiving more light Excessive nitrogen Reduce feeding intervals Plants yellowing Excessive water Reduce watering from bottom, lack intervals; check vigor, poor color for good drainage Low fertility Fertilize Plants wilt although Poor drainage and Use mix containing sufficient water aeration higher percent present organic matter; increase number of holes for drainage Marginal burning High salts Leach container with of the leaves to water at regular intervals Plants stunted in Low temperature Relocate container growth; sickly, to warmer area purplish color Low phosphate Increase phosphate level in base solution Holes in leaves, Insects such as Hand-pick the bigger leaves distorted thrips ones; use the in shape applicable organic control such as insecticidal soap, Diatomaceous Earth, Neem Oil; encourage natural predators like lad bus. Remove infected areas don't compost) Plant leaves with Plant diseases Consult a plant spots; dead dried guide for diagnosis; areas, or powdery remove diseased or rust areas areas (don't compost)
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