Calling everyone with a small to tiny garden
by James Tebbart
http://www.bigongardening.com
People love to get their hands dirty in the garden.
Perhaps it goes back to our Neanderthal ancestors, but
certainly, in most of us, our yearning for the soil is as
strong today as it was thousands of years ago. This can,
however, cause some large problems with lifestyles in the
twenty first century. High rise blocks of apartments don't
make life easy for the keen gardener and so listed below
are a few examples of vegetables and plants that can be
grown in very small spaces. In fact, even if you only have
a window box you can achieve a tasty range of your own
vegetables through the season.
This is called the inter-cropping system and the key
requirement is that you know the needs of your crops and
plan the season carefully. The first thing is to find
vegetables that only need a small space, certainly no more
than six inches per plant, but even this will depend on the
amount of space you have. This amount needs to not only
grow the plant but allow space for the fruit.
Vegetables that work well with this system are things like
radishes, spinach, beets turnips, green onion, carrots,
lettuce, parsley, chard and kohlrabi. These are also plants
that enjoy and can germinate in cold soil to the point of
being able to cope with quite deep frosts. This means that
they can be planted earlier in the year, before the frosts
have finished.
Since planting space will be limited, you should consider
only plants that can offer maximum returns. These include
vegetables like celery, green onions, herbs, kale, parsley,
spinach, pepper and tomatoes because they can offer the
chance of multiple harvests over long periods of time. On
the other hand, you will want to carefully decide about
including vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce,
garlic, onion bulbs and radishes due to the fact that they
will only yield a one-time harvest. Your personal
preferences and the kind of production you want from your
inter-cropping garden need to be assessed for the
efficiency of your small garden.
When you are happy with you choice and you plant them,
make sure that you give as much space as you can to each
plant. Remember how much they'll grow and that their fruits
will be smaller and less in quantity if they are over
crowded. Most packets of seeds have the information that
you'll require; ensure that you comply for the best yields
possible.
There are some plants which sprawl with growth. If you
grow these around a circle of wire or stake them out you
will gain space and also keep the plants off the ground for
a cleaner and more abundant fruit.
With even just a small window box, it is still possible to
grow something using the inter-cropping system but remember
to think about the harvest requirements and remember to
give as much space as you can and you simply can't go
wrong!
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