If you yearn for fresh produce that has travelled no further than from your back garden to the kitchen, there’s still time to get going this summer on a vegetable plot. You may think that you don’t have the space, but there’s room in almost every garden to fit in a variety of veg or two.
For meaningful crops in a poky plot, raised beds are the answer. Built out of bricks or stacked sleepers and filled with fresh topsoil, elevated beds offer salvation where the existing earth is heavy and damp or full of builders’ rubble. Kilgraney Railway Sleepers sells new sleepers from £11, plus delivery.
If you need to buy topsoil to fill your beds, local turf suppliers often sell soil improved with compost and manure for about £55 a ton. Make the beds at least 1ft high (preferably 2ft) to give your vegetables plenty of room to root, and the edges will double up as a comfortable seat. Circular or geometric beds look good at the centre of a narrow garden, while the easiest shape to build is rectilinear. Just make sure you can reach the middle from either side for easy picking.
An efficient method of planting small raised beds is known as “square-foot gardening”. Ditch the traditional system of rows and sow in 12in x 12in squares instead, each devoted to a single crop. Sow closely together, with tall varieties at the back, so the vegetables form a patchwork quilt of harvestable leaves. This method was developed by Mel Bartholomew, an American whose website (www.squarefootgardening.com) would make you think that the system could solve the problem of global food shortages.
In truth, a raised 4ft x 4ft bed won’t feed a family, though it will provide deliciously fresh salads, mini-finger carrots and herbs. I have one myself and find it particularly good for super-fast pak choi, rocket, spinach and lettuce. These leaves are sown in-1in apart and harvested regularly by snipping what’s needed with scissors. As long as 1in-1in of stem is left uncut, the foliage happily regrows, providing three or more pickings before the plants tire.
Then it’s a matter of clearing the roots and sowing a square foot of something else, such as coriander, dwarf French beans or more leaves for easy salads later. The trick to making this edible patchwork productive is the routine of sowing, harvesting and resowing — even pushing seeds in among existing crops for a speedy changeover. With the addition of a few winter-hardy varieties, it will stay looking good well into the autumn.
If you’re not sold on building your own raised beds, you can buy them ready-made from Unwins Direct (£29.99). They slot together like giant Lego kits and are just the job for the practically challenged. Stocked with pre-grown vegetable plants from the garden centre, they provide you with an instant veg patch.
Raised beds also have the advantage that they are less inviting than ground-level ones to cats on the lookout for a lavatory, particularly if they are netted or protected with holly twigs (or other spiky prunings) between plants. Plus, like the walls of a castle, the sides make a good line of defence against slugs and snails if a sentry-line of organic pellets is placed around the base and top.
You can’t afford losses in a small plot, yet the number of slugs and snails in most small gardens is relatively high because of the increased density of garden walls, sheds and fences. All are shady bolt holes that provide easy access to beds, so it always pays to grow vegetables together in a dedicated spot surrounded by paving or compacted earth. This flat perimeter creates a comfortable and clean surface to work from, and a no-man’s-land for sprinkling pellets around.
Don’t be fooled by show gardens or television shows where veg and flowers happily mingle — the veg won’t thrive unless they’re given plenty of room. Do make room for a select few flowers, though, such as African marigolds to tempt pollinators and aphid-eating hoverflies to patrol your crops. But, if space is at a premium, consign your flowers to steerage and reserve the spacious first-class accommodation for your veg.
Think laterally about your space and look to the walls for growing herbs in hanging baskets. Tender summer herbs, including basil, coriander and chervil, will sprout from seed in fresh compost. Other edible basket cases include salad leaves and trailing tomatoes. ‘Tumbler’ is the one sold by garden centres and forms long, green, leafy locks that hang 2½ft over the basket sides. Fed with plant food and watered every day, these stems produce two or three colanders of cherry tomatoes through the summer.
In pots, chilli peppers, tomatoes and dwarf runner beans make colourful patio plants. Put a 2in layer of growth-boosting composted horse manure (available by the bag from garden centres) in the bottom of the pot and use a mixture of 50:50 multipurpose and soil-based John Innes No 3. This makes a mix that holds on to moisture well but has the same weighty consistency of good garden earth that vegetables like.
Even a pond or the top of a waterbutt can be utilised for growing veg. Polystyrene packs of veg bought from a garden centre will float and grow on the water’s surface, especially lettuce, pak choi and salad leaves, because they love the constant moisture and develop long, kelp-like roots. It’s good for the pond, too, as the plants remove algae-promoting nitrogen from the water.
Some edible crops save space by being companionable. Climbing french and runner beans happily scale up sweetcorn stems, while pumpkins make a mound around the base. Salads such as the red radicchio ‘Versuvio’ are Ferrari-fast growers — ideal to fill the gap between slow-growing cabbages or to circle around the base of blackcurrants and raspberries.
Sometimes the solution for a small garden is to think big, especially if it’s shady. Apples, pears and plums bought pre-trained as fans or espaliers are an instantly productive feature with a ready-trained lattice-work of horizontal/vertical branches. Tied back to bamboo canes on a fence or wall with their heads in the sun, they’re as space-efficient as a climber. Check out Keepers Nursery, which also sells ballerinas — apples bred to grow on a single stem for a space-efficient fireman’s pole of fruit.
Above all, take heart: with a bit of imagination, small can be both beautiful and productive.
Keepers Nursery, 01622 726 465, www.keepers-nursery.co.uk; Kilgraney Railway Sleepers, 0115 989 0445, www.railwaysleepers.com; Unwins Direct, 01480 443 395, www.unwinsdirect.co.uk
