WHAT TO GROW IN AND WHERE - Vegetable, Fruit and Herb Growing in Small Spaces - page 2

ally has vegetables in orderly rows with a spacing that allows for hoeing off weeds. Because
we crowd our plants, the weeds get little chance to grow and those that do dare to pop their
head up are soon pulled out by hand. Weeding a pot or small bed is the work of a minute.
Since we're working with a small area we can give far more attention per plant than on a
large plot. This means we pick up developing problems early and get them sorted. For ex-
ample, some butterfly eggs can go unnoticed when you have a dozen cabbages but you are
going to spot them before they turn into ravenous caterpillars and eat half the plant when you
have just two or three plants growing.
The third dimension is, of course, height. Some plants provide huge value for the area they
use. Tomatoes growing up a stake are incredibly productive, producing pounds of fruit from
half a square foot area. Fruit trees trained up a wall will provide all you can eat from next to
no square footage.
Hanging baskets aren't just for flowers, tumbler tomatoes can look just as attractive as
surfinias, and strawberries can be grown in hanging baskets too. You can get flower pouches
which are hung on a wall and use these for strawberries as well.
A strawberry barrel with fruit planted into the side will provide enough strawberries for the
family and some pots of jam for the cupboard in very little space. Compared with conven-
tional planting you get about eight times as many plants per square foot using a barrel planter.
This is just a barrel shaped tub, often called a strawberry tower, with holes let into the sides
into which the plants are set.
You won't believe how many potatoes you can get from growing in a bag or barrel. Incid-
entally, the top show growers always grow their potatoes in bags of special compost rather
than the soil used by mere mortals.
Growers with space to spare may bother to do something called underplanting but it's
doubtful. They think in terms of rotation plans and this goes here and that goes there. Small
space growers do not want to see any bare soil so there is always something that can go under
the tomatoes or in that space where the cabbage was. Lettuce often benefit from some shade
in hot summers so they're good for planting in the shady spots. Got a square inch spare? Pop
a couple of radishes or spring onions in.
The fourth dimension is time. Having made the most of not every square inch but every
cubic inch of space we now need to think of timing. A full grown lettuce with a spread of,
say, 6 inches needs 113 square inches. Yet at the start of its life it only needs a tiny bit of
space.
By using our precious space most efficiently, growing in small pots and modules before
planting out in the final position, we can effectively treble our growing area. This concept
of successional sowing and planting is the key to maximum production from the smallest
spaces.