Growing Vegetables In A Small Garden Space
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 no larger than a card table can supply you with vegetables year-round. The trick is to create a garden that has the right growing conditions and to buy seeds that are well suited to smaller areas.
A lot of seed suppliers have started to offer miniature plants to meet the needs of people with limited space. They’re often in categories like midgets or space savers in their catalogs.
Vegetables are a different beast, however. Plants like heathers, rhodos and miniature bulbs are grown for decorative reasons in most cases.
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.
The biggest challenge with a small vegetable garden is practicality. Some vegetables such as lettuce will grow fine with only 4 hours of sunlight a day, but anything that produces a fruit (tomatoes, corn, beans, etc.) needs a solid 8 hours of direct sunlight or they aren’t going to be very productive. That sunlight isn’t necessary for dwarf azaleas, however.
Similarly, a friable soil mix, amply fertilized, is desirable in vegetable growing but too heady for many dwarf plants that are expected to stay small. The major problem, however, is presented by the need to turn over the vegetable garden’s soil every year, in effect reconstituting it; such heavy tilling cannot be done in a bed of rock garden plants and perennials. In most cases, a vegetable patch must be sited differently and separated from the conventional small-scale garden.
In spite of the challenges, growing vegetables in a small space is worth the effort. You’ll need to decide whether you want miniature fruit or just miniature plants. Small vegetables are cute, but often not so practical. There are some that are widely used though - cherry tomatoes and radishes are two perfect examples.
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