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Growing Vegetables In A Small Area

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Written by Dave Truman

Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Most people tend to picture vegetable gardens as sprawling plots of land with rows stretching 15 feet or more. Growing vegetables in a container or limited space seems foreign to many.

by DaveTruman

Most people tend to picture vegetable gardens as sprawling plots of land with rows stretching 15 feet or more. Growing vegetables in a container or limited space seems foreign to many.

Yet growing vegetables in cramped spaces is not only possible but highly rewarding. One can grow tomatoes in tubs at the edge of a patio, strawberries in empty milk cartons on a windowsill, lettuce in a modest window box, watermelons along a strip beside a driveway or beans on a trellis on a small apartment balcony.

A space the size of a card table can provide an ample supply of vegetables. The trick is creating a garden that has the right conditions to thrive, and choosing seeds that are suited to being grown in a smaller area.

Many seed companies have started offering miniature, compact plants to meet the needs of people with limited space. You'll often find them in their catalogs or on their websites under categories like space miser, midgets or space savers.

Growing vegetables in a smaller space is different from growing other things in the same space. Plants like rhododendrons, heathers or miniature bulbs are grown mainly for their appearance. They're merely decorative.

Vegetables, however, are grown more for the taste buds than to please the eye. You might find corn stalks and bean bushes in the average vegetable garden, but they're not so common in landscape design.

One of the challenges with a small vegetable garden is practicality. While some vegetables, such as lettuce, will be fine with only 4 hours of sunlight a day, most others require a full 8 hours.

A good mix of soil, with the proper fertilizer, is necessary for growing vegetables but may be too much for some dwarf plants that are supposed to stay small. The main problem however is the need to turn over the soil in a vegetable garden every year. This kind of heavy tilling just can't be done in some small garden areas, which is why a small scale vegetable garden usually needs to be separate from the average garden.

This said, there is no doubting the fact that the smaller vegetables are worth trying, especially if space for the larger kind is at a premium. It is important to choose, however, the kind of smallness desired, whether it is the fruit or produce itself that will be miniature, or the plant that yields it. Miniature vegetables as such are amusing and eye-catching, a novelty that many restaurants and imaginative cooks offer with great success. Some miniatures, for example, cherry tomatoes, are accepted for their own sake, while a number of vegetables are of course just naturally small - radishes, for example.

About the Author:

Are you planning on growing vegetables this year? Plan your vegetable garden layout before you start planting. Learn more about planning your garden and get my free reports on pest control, mulching and composting at http://www.vegetablegardeners.com

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