Small Space Kitchen Gardens

By Barbara Segall

Growing vegetables for home use is one of gardening's great pleasures. Picking fresh crops through the year provides highly nutritious, taste-packed rewards, unmatched by supermarket purchases.

Although my garden is relatively large, I grow vegetables in small rectangular raised beds, within flower borders and among herbs and edible flowers, as well as in containers, so I think of myself as a small space veggie gardener.

I have particular vegetable favourites and grow tomatoes, pumpkins, beans and salad leaves as my main crops each year. Large, space-demanding plants such as cabbages and Brussels sprouts are delicious if home grown, but I prefer to give the space to some of the salads that I can provide all through the year.

The first rule is to plant what you enjoy most - fresh leaves for salad mixes, edible flowers and various coloured lettuces - may be your summertime choice, while for winter you may decide that you cannot live without a daily pick of spicy oriental salad leaves. Of course, if there is a particular vegetable or fruit that you would eat on a regular basis, glut or no glut, then plant that in profusion and make the most of it.
Planning and making the choices that suit your taste buds and garden spaces are the keys to success in the small space veggie garden.

Raised beds

Defining the vegetable garden’s limits, using railway sleepers or wooden boards provides small spaces that are useful for maximum cropping. The soil cultivated is raised above ground level and you can work in compost and other organic material. Raised beds usually narrow and well-defined spaces.

The width of the raised bed is critical: any wider than 90cm(36in) and it will not be possible to work the centre without stepping onto the soil surface within the bed. And that is the point of raised beds. You don’t need the space between vegetable rows for walking or working from. This means that the soil will not be damaged or compacted by you and, if enriched regularly with compost, will go on producing healthy tasty vegetables over a long period. You can weed, tend and harvest plants from either side of the bed with ease.

Colour scheming

I am growing vegetables in containers as well this year, closer to the house, so that I can water them easily and also to pick them fresh for the pot or the salad. Because they are right on the patio I want them to look good too, so although I am choosing them primarily for their taste, the colour and texture of their leaves and the shapes in which they grow, are factors in the mix. Lettuce, providing crunch and crispy texture whether planted in rows or in containers, comes in a rainbow wave of wonderful colours, from bright, apple green through to translucent pinks and purple. Chard, whose stems and leaves are delicious, just blanched and brushed with butter, is available in white, yellow and red stemmed and veined forms. Beetroot foliage, delicious when young in salads, comes in a green and purple veined combination as well as in a matt purple.

Containers for vegetables

Even in the smallest garden space there is sufficient space and opportunity for a determined fruit and vegetable grower to plant a wide range of vegetables, fruit and herbs. Window boxes, containers of all shapes and sizes, hanging baskets and grow-bags are among the challenging sites for the kitchen gardener.

I use terracotta or plastic pots for salad crops that I harvest as cut-and-come-again crops. I use scissors to cut individual leaves from the young plants as they develop, taking care not to over-harvest from each young plant.

This year I am growing potatoes in containers too. I am using special potato buckets as well as 40-litre potato patio planters with handles. Also on my list of containers to try this year is a mini garden, propagator and cold frame, which looks as if it will be the perfect place to grow my favourite kitchen herbs, parsley, chives, basil and chervil.

Beans and peas grow well in containers and so do courgettes. Pea ‘Half Pint’ grows to just 12-15 inches tall and is perfect for a window box or patio container. Runner bean ‘Hestia’ is a stringless runner bean and grows to 18 inches tall, so also suits containers.

You do have to remember that all plants grown in containers need regular attention for you, watering and feeding them as they grow.

Seeds or young plants

I usually grow vegetables from seed, sown in trays in a heated propagator or direct into the ground, when the weather has warmed up, but this year for convenience I am experimenting with plant plugs. Many seed companies offer individual seedlings and small plants, grown in a tiny ‘plug’ of compost. The range offered is wide and the seedlings will not have as much root disturbance than those I would normally grow in trays. By the time they reach me they will have gone through all the difficult stages in a young plant’s life and are less likely to suffer from damping off, the fungal disease which can wipe out a whole collection of seedlings soon after germination. This means that they will establish quickly and I can get to picking and using them sooner and without having to spend as much time nurturing them.

Another quick way into kitchen gardening is to use seed mats or seed tapes. The mats fit into pots and the tapes can be placed in rows. You just cover them with compost or soil and water them in, then wait for the seeds to germinate and grow. Last year I grew the most wonderful watercress (Watercress Aqua from Mr. Fothergill’s Seeds) from mats in pots. This year I am trying their salad collection which has one mat of each of Sky Rocket, mixed lettuce leaves and watercress.

Suppliers

Potato Patio Planters
Haxnicks Ltd www.haxnicksco.uk
(available from garden centres of call Haxnicks on 0845 241 1555
for stockists).

Mini garden
Vitopod Mini Garden is a portable propagator and cold frame as well as a raised bed. Info from www.greenhousesensation.co.uk

Young Plants, fruit & seed suppliers
(check with suppliers whether seed or young plants available)

B&Q is selling a range tomato, pepper and other vegetable plants in their Organic Living Range (for stockists call 0845 850 0175 or visit www.diy.com).

Marshalls (SE Marshall & Co)
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
Tel: 01480 443390.
www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk

Mr Fothergill's Seeds
Kentford, Suffolk.Tel: 0845 1662511. www.mr-fothergills.co.uk
(seeds, seed tapes and seed mats).

The Organic Gardening Catalogue
Horsham, Surrey.
Tel: 01932 253666.
www.OrganicCatalogue.com

Kitchen Gardens to visit

Garden Organic Ryton, Warwickshire
Fruit and vegetable displays and is the centre for organic gardening.
www.gardenorganic.org.uk

Felbrigg Hall Norfolk
National Trust property with 2 acres of kitchen garden.
www.nationaltrust.org

Ballymaloe Ireland
Cookery School with a 6 acre kitchen garden.
www.cookingisfun.ie

West Green House Hampshire
Marylyn Abbot opens her ornamental kitchen garden.
www.westgreenhouse.co.uk

Heligan Gardens Cornwall
Old garden lost and found and restored with several kitchen garden areas.
www.heligan.com

FREE SEED GIVEAWAY!

Nothing beats home grown veggies direct from your garden.

We have 30 sets of three Mr Fothergill's seed packets to give away to readers.

Varieties include Courgettes, Dwarf Green Beans and Rocket leaves. If you lack space in your garden, don't worry as these are ideal grown in containers, which is a really popular way of growing vegetables.

For your free packets of seeds please either ring Tel. 01442 877737 or email info@amramedia.co.uk, with your name and address.

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