Читать книгу Self-Sufficiency: Grow Your Own - Ian Cooke - Страница 13

Many people would like to grow fruit and vegetables but feel that the space they have is too restricted. Even in a tiny garden or on a balcony, however, you can produce some home-grown vegetables and fruits. With a restricted space, select compact varieties and those that are sometimes called ‘mini vegetables’. Use a close spacing and harvest the vegetables when small, following with successional sowings to get the most from your space. Use any soil you have, plus growbags, pots and containers. Always use new growbags and replace the soil in pots every year, to avoid a build-up of disease and to get the maximum yield from a small space. Avoid crops which take a long time to mature, such as bulb onions and winter brassicas, and those that take up a lot of space, such as maincrop potatoes and courgettes.

Carrots, turnips and beetroot will quickly produce small tender roots. Choose the leek ‘Armor’ for harvesting when young. A range of salads and leafy crops such as spinach can be grown in a small space. Calabrese will produce small central heads at a close spacing but it is probably not worth growing them on for the secondary crop. ‘Avalanche’ is a good small cauliflower and ‘Minicole’ a reliable cabbage for close spacing.

Tomatoes, peppers and aubergines can easily be grown in pots or growbags. The small trailing cherry tomato known as ‘Tumbler’ is happy in a hanging basket. Dwarf French beans can be grown in pots. Tall climbing runner beans need to be planted in the soil but a wigwam of five canes and plants does not take up much space and will yield several pickings over many weeks. Cucumbers can be grown up a trellis or over an arch.