Veggies

The advantages of producing our own food at home or close to where we live are well known. Some of these advantages include –

• Saving money
• Improving your families nutrition
• Providing fresher produce
• Lower food miles
• Lack of chemical residues
• It shows kids where their food comes from
• Enables you to eat a greater variety of foods

However, as the amount of land available to both urban and suburban dwellers alike shrinks, we need to develop strategies for maximising the use of what growing area we do have. The following strategies have been developed to help you to get the most out of your growing area, so have a tip-toe through the information below and select a couple of things to try, then give it a go!

Develop a plan – Assess the resources you have for food growing and compare them to the strategies listed here. Some will work for you, some won’t and some you may need to trial to find out. Develop a plan which helps you get your head around what you are trying to do and makes sense to you, Such a plan may include –

• A sketch of your growing area showing what structures/plants are there now and what you intend to change to increase your productivity.
• A succession plan of what to sow/plant out to keep production up.
• Designs or sketches for things you need to build (cold frame, mini-greenhouse, trellises or compost bin etc).
• An action plan of who is responsible for doing what, when

By recording your plan on paper or electronically you will be able to keep track of your progress and record your successes and failures.

Aspect – The way your veggie growing area faces can have a great bearing on how much you produce. The best aspect is north around to north east and if your growing area faces south and gets no sun you will have problems. If you have a choice go for the best aspect that you can. It is possible to grow crops which can cope with a lower amount of light (generally leaf crops) or use mirrors to deflect sunlight towards your plants but the better your aspect is to start, the easier your veggie growing adventures will be.

Think Vertical – many varieties of vegetables and fruits can climb such as beans, cucumber, chokoes, peas, or be trained upward such as tomatoes or even pumpkins. In the 2011 season we got the best harvest of huge pumpkins ever by growing them across the back fence. So maximise your horizontal space by growing vertically against any vertical surface you can, by building free standing trellises, by growing up established trees or even using growing veggies as a living trellis eg by growing beans up corn stems. You can even put some growing medium in a large pot next to a structure and grow fruiting vines like squash or pumpkin up over the roof. More information about vertical growing techniques is available here.

Use succession planting  (Stack in Time) – This doesn’t give you more growing space, but allows you to get more out of the growing space you have and is, simply put, replacing any vegetable harvested with another one straight away. To make this work you have to be right on top of maintaining your fertility, have a great plan and be constantly sowing so you have seedlings ready. A detailed article on succession planting is available here.

Don’t plant too much of one thing – getting the most out of your growing area means only planting just enough of any one vegetable for day to day consumption. Otherwise you get a whole stack of one crop and need to reserve it somehow, but still have to buy in the rest of your veggies. A good plan will make sure that this doesn’t happen.

Interplant where possible – rather than growing long rows of the same crop with blank space in between, plant out the whole bed with all sorts of different veggies grown together. You can plant so that all the veggies ripen over a period of time so that the beds are producing for a longer period and, again, a good plan will support this and make it easier for you. Intercropping can confuse pests, reduce the amount of bare ground and increase the amount of produce per square metre of garden. This will require ignoring the spacing recommendations on the seed packets and some of the gardening books but a well maintained organic garden will have the fertility to cope with it. We plant so that the veggies grow within about 30cm of each other. Note: This will not work for corn, which needs to be planted in a block to pollinate correctly.

Be prepared to experiment with unusual vegetables or varieties – One of the fun bits of growing your own is growing and trying new veggies and new varieties. Get hold of as many seed catalogues as you can manager and spend some time reading through and taking note of what will grow in your climate, how long it takes to get a harvest and how early or late in the year each variety grows. This can spread the harvest and perhaps by trying some new types of veggies, allow you to exploit slow times in the veggie growing year when you may otherwise strike a “hungry gap”. We have tried new stuff that we have not been used to eating like Jerusalem artichokes, Asian greens, leeks and broad beans and found the greater variety is good for the garden and good for the cook. There is hardly a day when we can’t go out to the garden and harvest something. Try a small amount at a time and then if they are good, add them to your plan if not at least you tried.

Consider perennial vegetable beds – Perennial veggies are the parts of plants which are harvested and eaten like vegetables and where the parent plant lives for more than two years eg asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, chokoes, Malabar spinach and taro. Generally we tend to eat rather more annual vegetables than perennials and so annual vegetables are the type that make up the bulk of our veggie patches. While some perennials like asparagus and artichokes are available only for a short season, others like shallots and rhubarb crop for extended periods. There should be a place in everyone’s veggie growing efforts for perennials.

Try medium/small varieties of vegetables – during your seed catalogue research keep your eye out for dwarf varieties and small types of vegetables that allow you to get more vegetable from the same space, like planting bush cucumbers or pumpkins rather than runners, sugarloaf cabbage rather than drumhead types or Cherrytime capsicum rather than the larger Californian wonder.

Make a place for containers – There will always be some extra space where you can fit in the odd veggie box or self watering container so if your do take advantage of some unused space don’t forget to add that into your plan so you can manage the extra space effectively. They can also be built to be self watering, making them water efficient and reducing the time require to keep them watered. Some techniques for making and using containers to grow fruit and vegetables can be found here

Make initial thick sowings – work especially well for root crops like carrot or beetroot seeing as these need to be sown where they are going to grow (they don’t take well to transplanting) sow thickly and then thin out as they grow, eating the thinning as baby vegetables. Some leaf crops like lettuce can be used in a similar way.

Indeterminate vs determinate veggies - a few vegetables, such as tomatoes, peas and beans contain varieties within their ranks that will grow, mature and be harvested within a specified time and a defined plant size. These are referred to as having a determinate growth habit, also referred to as “bush” or “dwarf” varieties whereas other varieties of the same plant may continue to grow throughout the season. These varieties are referred to as indeterminate, also referred to as “climbing” or “staking” varieties and these will produce for as long as the soil and climatic conditions will allow. Determinate plants are more likely to give you a single major harvest then little or nothing while the indeterminates will spread the harvest out providing less at any one time but spreading the harvest out to give you more produce over the growing season.

Stacking in space – Rather than growing a single crop at one level, “stacking” your veggies allows you to maximise your productivity for a given area of land by growing productive species at several levels. A great example of this is the “3 sisters” guild of the Native Americans. They would grow corn (an upright crop) and once it was underway plant climbing beans to grow up the corn (providing nitrogen to the other plants) and squash to grow over the ground and act as a living mulch. So rather than just harvest corn from a plot of land they got three crops: Corn, beans and squash, thus tripling their productivity for no increase in growing space.

Use cut-and-come-again veggies – If you grow a cauliflower, as nice as it will be to eat, once you have harvested it the growing space will be non-productive, require replanting and will take some time before it is harvestable again. If you plant vegetables which can provide an extended harvest period by re-growing after partial harvest this will increase your overall productivity. Cut and come again veggies include Asian greens (mizuna, mibuna, tatsoi) non-heading lettuce eg oakleaf, celery, silver beet, spinach and broccoli will produce side shoots after the main head is harvested.

Use fruiting veggies – In the same way as cut-and-come-again veggies extend your harvest, some veggies which produce fruit such as solanum (capsicum, tomato and eggplant) and cucurbits (squash, cucumber, zucchini, cucumber) continue to produce throughout the growing season. A zucchini planted in early spring and another in mid summer can keep you in zucchinis for most of the frost-free part of your growing season.

Consider sprouts and/or microgreens – these two techniques are a no-land, low cost, high yield way to grow veggies.  To grow sprouts the simplest way is to soak some suitable seeds in a container, drain. Rinse and drain again. Then rinse and drain twice a day for a week or so after which your sprouts are ready to harvest. Microgreens are a bit more complicated but basically, the seeds are germinated in a container of potting mix, then grown up to the four leaf stage at which point they are harvested with scissors. Detailed instructions about producing sprouts and microgreens are available here.

Install a Straw Bale Garden – This is a quick and easy method to start a raised veggie garden and works by putting chook manure on hay or straw bales resting on the ground then  watering them well and keeping them wet. Let them breakdown for a couple of weeks and then plant veggies into compost on the top of the bale. As the bale breaks down it supplies nutrients to the veggies and keeps them growing well.

Install wicking bed – wicking beds can be built in all shapes and sizes. These consist of a lower water reservoir filled with gravel to support an upper layer of growing medium. The bed works by keeping the reservoir filled with water (through filler tubes put in during construction) which then “wicks” up into the growing medium by capillary action. The wicking process ensures that the plant always has access to water but as little is lost via evaporation as possible. More information on wicking bed construction is available here.

Exploit non-traditional growing spaces – If you are thinking of growing vegetables in your back yard, but don’t have much room, there are other places which can be used to grow food which you may not have considered –

• Front yard and road verge at the front of your house
• Front yard/back yard of friends, neighbours or relatives (with or without produce sharing)
• Suitably reinforced flat roofs of sheds etc.
• Local community gardens
• Local schools or other institutions (with permission of course)
• Guerrilla gardening of local vacant lots or other waste ground

Extend the season – by the construction of microclimates (where this is feasible) you can sometimes extend the growing season so that you can plant somewhat earlier and harvest somewhat later than is usually possible. Covering crops with a lightweight fabric (so-called floating row cover) can keep temperatures up and ward off frost also avoid planting frost sensitive crops so that they will run into a time when frost is likely.

Consider Irrigation – one of the limiting factors, particularly for growing food in containers is ensure that the plants get enough water to grow well, particularly in hot weather. This can be especially important where growing in containers is concerned. At the planning stage it is worth including in some plans for getting water to your plants. Self watering containers and wicking beds are good, and clay pot irrigation works well when beds in the ground are used but consideration to a low cost irrigation system may be worthwhile also. More information on low tech irrigation techniques can be found here.

It is unlikely that all of these techniques will suit your particular circumstances but you can just about guarantee that at least a few will. Some, like starting out with a plan, will be good advice for anyone wanting to grow their own food in a small area. As part of your planning process, decide on a couple of these techniques which you consider most likely to work for you, put your plan together, then get out there and PLANT! Oh, and good luck!

If you are interested in small space gardening you may also like to read the companion article to this one - Strategies for a productive small fruit garden