Top tips for growing crops despite limited space

[Alice Johnson]

Hi everyone. What are your top tips for growing crops in a small garden with limited space? Do you use containers, hanging baskets or do you have other methods?

[Bren In Pots]

My tip is to sow in modules, that way you're planting a viable plant so you won't end up with wasteful gaps in your beds.

[burnie]

Hanging baskets seem to need a lot of maintenance, alright if it rains a lot.

[Scarlet]

Grow vertically!


I have a few cheap metal arches that I use to span pathways. Growing up and over saves space.
Squash can take up huge amounts of space but there are some varieties that can be trained on frames or trellises. I often grow tromba up and over an arch.
Plant squashes and trailing plants in the corner of your beds and try to train them to spiral out and over the path as opposed to growing over the growing area.

[1Bee]

What Scarlet said.

Grow vertically; pull out finished crops quickly and have something in a pot waiting to go in, sow quick veg between rows of slower growing.

There's lots you can do.

[Lumpy]

Remember what grows up will also grow down. My large wall baskets have salad crops and sugar snap peas planted in them.
Find out exactly how much space each crop needs and make it smaller if you can cope with a smaller end product (not good for everything but cabbages etc are just smaller)
Select your seeds carefully so you don't end up with a triffid when you wanted a teeny weeny.
Use planters, MFB's, tyres,arches, wall baskets, hanging baskets (I always have my toms in them), plastic storage boxes (although not clear ones as the roots of anything don't to be in the light).

Think outside the box - excuse the pun and ponder for a while before you site raised beds etc.

[lolie]

Consider growing dwarf varieties of the things you want to eat and/or harvesting before plants reach maturity.

It would help if we knew what you consider to be "a small garden".

[Penellype]

Start things off in pots or modules indoors and plant into containers that can be moved around. Layer the containers so that the ones at the back need minimal maintenance and those at the front are the ones that are high maintenance or about to be harvested. Providing the containers are not too heavy they can be moved for access to things behind.

Some vegetables, particularly brassicas and carrots, don't need that much light and can be grown under shelving with other plants on top. I regularly grow things like calabrese, kohlrabi and carrots in buckets under shelving with strawberries on. The shelving can act as a support for netting to keep pests off the plants underneath.

[veggiechicken]

Grow fast maturing crops, those that are ready in 4 months or so. With careful planning and starting seedlings in modules, you can use the available space for 3 different crops a year. Don't waste space on crops that take a year to mature or take up a lot of ground, and grow vertically where possible, up poles, fences and arches. Grow in pots that can be moved around the garden and fitted into small spaces to make the most of odd corners.

[Potstubsdustbins]

I do not have a garden as such, just concrete or water, so water cress in the pond everything else from potatoes too brassicas goes in containers of one sort or and other.

My tomatoes go in either black flower buckets of in hanging baskets on a south facing wall.

The main thing to get right is successional sowing, over the years I have amassed many plant pots of differing sizes so that I can go from module to 3" pots, 3" pots to 5" and so on until I have space ready in the final container.