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.

It’s not only possible, however, it can be highly rewarding as well. You can do all kinds of things - grow tomatoes in pots on the patio, beans on a trellis on an apartment balcony, or watermelons along the side of your driveway, for example.

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.

Producing vegetables on a reduced scale, however, is basically a different proposition from other kinds of gardening. Small gardens devoted to woody ornamentals like dwarf conifers, rhododendrons or heathers or to miniature bulbs or alpines are arranged and managed largely for appearance: they exist to be decorative, to please the eye.

Vegetables are most often grown to reward not the eye but the palate. So while corn stalks and bean bushes can make the mouth water they rarely make the eye pop, and they are not likely to be found gracing a well designed border, although creative horticulturists have combined a few of the handsomest vegetables with flowering plants to good effect.

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 proper soil mix is also important, along with the right fertilizer. It can be too much for some dwarf plants, however and can make them grow beyond the space they’re given. Plus, you need to turn the soil in your vegetable garden annually. This kind of tilling can’t be done in some small spaces.

Growing small vegetables is a worthwhile challenge, however. You’ll need to decide whether you want the fruit to be miniature as well, or only the plant that produces it. Miniature vegetables are a cute novelty, but they’re really not that practical. However there are some that are widely accepted, such as cherry tomatoes and radishes.

Tags: Vegetables

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 7:08 am and is filed under Vegetables. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.