Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
1
WHAT TO GROW IN AND WHERE
Like most things in life, success with small space and container growing involves some plan-
ning, some work and some luck. Luck is critical to all gardening, if by luck you mean the
weather. We can add water, we can add nutrients, we can fight off the pests but adding sun-
shine is beyond most of us.
You may have noticed that weeds will pop up anywhere: in the shade under a tree, cracks in
a pavement, even a hole in a wall. Sadly the crops we eat aren't quite so tough. Over the years
we've bred our crops for our needs, not theirs, and so they're a lot fussier than the weeds.
They need sunlight if they're to thrive. The more sunlight, the more energy is available for
the plant's solar power plant to convert into leaf and fruit, so the sunnier the better.
Now you may think you have light enough but the human eye is a marvellous instrument. In
bright sunlight our pupils contract and in low light they expand so we can see in quite a range.
In fact we're hardly aware of the difference; walk around the corner into shade and our eyes
adapt without our needing to do anything. Any photographer will tell you that light levels vary
tremendously, whatever our eyes tell us.
Basically if you're facing south, then your plants will have plenty of direct sunlight. To the
east they'll get full sun in the morning and to the west in the afternoon but facing to the north
they're going to struggle. It's not impossible to grow in north-facing places but avoid if you
can. Similarly avoid shade if you can as well.
There is an exception to this rule, of course. You can grow a morello cherry trained up a
north-facing wall.
The trick to getting the most from small spaces is to think and plan in four dimensions. Now
don't worry, we're not moving into Dr Who territory with four dimensions, but time and plan-
ning ahead are critical to success.
The first two dimensions, length and breadth, give us the area we have to grow in. Because
we're going to be providing the ideal nutrition for our plants we can grow more densely than
normal and gain yields nearly double that of conventional planting. Large area growing usu-
