Like any vegetable garden a patio vegetable garden can bring you a lot of joy and a reward of growing your own tasty vegetables.
It’s the simple delight of biting into a tomato and eaten it on the spot, it’s just pure enjoyment.
Just like a vegetable garden in your patio vegetable garden you can grow nearly every vegetable that you want to grow. All you need to start growing your vegetables on your patio, windowsill, balcony – you just need sufficient space to start your productive mini-garden.
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Because of the easier access to your tubs and containers it means that often pest control is much easier. A patio vegetable garden is an easy way to grow and eat very tasty home-grown vegetables and great way to introduce your children to the delight and rewards of a vegetable gardening. And you’ll also save yourself plenty of cash!
Containers
You can use nearly any type of containers for growing your patio vegetable garden. For example: you can use tubs, pots, wooden boxes, baskets, old drums, old water tank, patio gro-sacks, an old laundry basket, a toy bin or if you live near the sea plastic fish trays, etc. The size of the container you will use to grow your vegetables in will need to vary according to the vegetable crop you want to grow.
Pots and tubs up to 12 – 18 inches are a good size to grow parsley, spring onions, lettuce, radishes and herbs.
Patio Gro-sacks are a brilliant way to growing your own potatoes. Pots around the size of 20 inches can grow tomatoes, pepper, aubergine, potatoes, spinach, swiss chard, dwarf runner beans.
Whatever the size or type of the container you are using you must make sure it drains effectively for you to produce successful vegetable yields. You can ensure this happens by adding broking brinks in the bottom of the container or add about 1 inch of coarse gravel in the bottom of each container this will ensure good drainage.
Soil or Compost
When you need to fill the containers and pots you can go to the local garden centre or nursery and buy some soil or compost. You can buy topsoil, multi-purpose compost, or moisture control compost, multipurpose compost 4 month feed – which feeds your plants up to 4 month. Just visit your local garden centre and see what suits your needs.
Most people use compost to grow the vegetables in a patio vegetable garden rather then topsoil because compost is lighter and so the pots are easier to move around – which is always worth considering.
Seeds and Plants
The easiest vegetables to grow in a patio vegetable garden are ones that are easily transplanted. You can start your vegetables from seed. Seeds that are easy to grow are: radishes, cut and come again lettuce, dwarf runner beans, beetroot, peas and onions – sow these straight into the pots where you want to grow your vegetables in. All you need to do is fill the container with the chosen compost, sow the seed and cover with ¼ inch to ½ inch of compost and water gently.
Many people have better success if they buy vegetable plants – popular plants to buy are: courgettes, sweetcorn, tomato, pepper, aubergine, parsley, lettuce plants – you can get these from you local garden centre, nursery or car-boot sale.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each one. If you sow your own seeds it is far cheaper than buying plants. Also if you grow from seeds you have a larger variety of different vegetable seeds to choose from.
However, if you sow seeds you need to be very watchful because you cannot let them dry out – if you do they won’t come up. Also if you over water the vegetable seeds will rot and die.
Fertilising
Depending on the compost you use you will have to feed your plants some type of fertilizer for your patio vegetable garden, it would be very useful to use a time-release or water soluble type of fertilizer. The time-release fertilizer is mixed with the potting compost at the time of planting such as; Osmocote which is in pellets and is a time-release fertilizer.
Water soluble fertilizers, are added to water and is used when the vegetable plants begin to grow. Miracle Gro is an example for a water soluble fertilizer.
The quickest and easiest way to fertilize your vegetable plants – is to prepare a fertilizer solution and then water it over the soil mixture.
If you buy plants you’ll need to start watering the fertilizer solution from the day you planted them. But if you started with seeds you only need to water them with rain or tap water just to keep the soil moist enough until the seeds starts to germinate. Once the seeds have started to emerge you can begin using the fertilizer solution.
The frequency of watering your patio vegetable garden will depend from crop to crop, and on how wet the compost is in each container, you’ll find though that once per day is enough.
You’ll find that vegetable plants with lots of foliage might need watering twice a day. Vegetable plants don’t need as much watering during periods of slow growth.
Sunlight
You’ll find that nearly all vegetable plants will grow better in full sunlight rather than in shade. Though, leafy vegetable crops such as lettuce, spinach and parsley can put up with more shade than root crops such as radishes, beetroot and onions.
Vegetable plants such as: tomatoes, aubergine, cucumbers and peppers need the most sun of all the plants because they are fruit bearing. One main advantage to a patio vegetable garden is that you can place the containers in areas where they will be able to receive the best possible growing conditions for that vegetable.
Harvesting
To get the best tasting and full of flavour vegetables you need to harvest them at their peak of maturity. Tomatoes that ripen on the vine, just taste divine, lettuce picked at the right time means they are crisp and full of flavour.
When the growing season has finished empty and discard the soil and plant from the container. It’s advisable not to reuse the same compost for the following season. The soil can be infected soil and your vegetables will then suffer from pests and disease. So it’s better to start afresh.
Pests and Diseases
Even if you grow your vegetables in containers they are still susceptible to the same pests and diseases that any vegetable gardener might have. Periodically you will need to check out your vegetable plants for pests and diseases. If you notice anything then treat the vegetable plants accordingly.
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