10 easy foods to grow in small spaces

Today I was meant to be in the garden enjoying a full day of gardening while my precious ones were away for the weekend visiting Granny...however rain has forced me inside. I am not going to waste the time though! I have to plan our new veggie area and do some reading on more ways to grow nutritious food for my family.

A couple of months ago I bought a book called Fresh Food From Small Spaces which I enjoyed reading. While many of the things he recommended we had already implemented there were other ideas that we hadn't thought of. A few of the following suggestions come from this book, others are from what we have learnt along the way.

1. Salads in container troughs - these can be used outside on balconies, in courtyards or even on sunny window sills.

2. Carrots in deep buckets - large round buckets with drainage holes in the bottom are a great way to grow carrots. Again balconies, courtyards or sunny spots in your home. Just remember to use a tray to catch the overflow! Don't want stained carpets.

3. Hanging baskets for strawberries - even though these are seasonal treats, the health benefits of fresh berries are fantastic.

4. Sprouts - buy a sprouting system and make a variety of fresh sprouts for salads and sandwiches. This takes up such a little space on your kitchen counter.

5. Herbs in containers or hanging baskets - used for flavour or medicinal purpose, herbs are a must have in ever kitchen garden.

6. Miniture fruit trees or berry plants in pots - balconies or courtyards are great for this.

7. Making your own yoghurt or kefir which is full of good intestinal flora is simple to do in small spaces.

8. Growing mushrooms in a dark area! This is from the book and is a novel idea, one I will try someday as I love mushrooms.

9. Using wall space with trellises for beans, peas or vine. Beans and peas can be planted in large diameter pots against a wall with a trellis behind.

10. Wheat or barley grass is an easy power food to grow on your windowsill and can be used in smoothies and vegetable juices.

So there you go, some interesting ways to get whole food from your small spaces.

Growing Broad Beans ~ Winter Delicacy.

We have had our second meal with broad beans as a side serving. These have to be one of the most delicious vegetables to hit our plates yet.

The first time I tasted broad beans was at the local bistro last winter and knew that I had to grow my own. I was delighted to find them at the end of summer at our garden shop.

Broad beans can only be grown in winter in our Mediterranean climate. They take three to four months to start yielding and thereafter should be picked regularly.

Something that I learnt in my son's botany studies this year is that all plants primary goal is to make seed so that it can continue its type. Therefore if we pick the beans, the plant will make more flowers to make more seed (which we will again pick.)



The plants can grow to 1.5 m tall and can be staked individually or as a bunch like I did. I used 6 stakes and then tied a thick plastic rope around them to give some stability. The winds here can snap the stalk easily.


The flowers are gorgeous aren't they? My gardening book says the pollen (and the beans) can be fatal to people of Southern European Descent due to an inherited disorder called Favism!! Goodness! So if that's you, don't sniff them :-)


The pods can be eaten when very young, but the beans are best fully grown to the size of a R2 coin. Slit them open on one side, push the beans out into a pot with your thumb and steam lightly. Eat just like that. They taste like a soft-sweet-pea-cross-green bean, really intriguing.

As they are part of the legume family they are really good to plant after the heavy feeding crops of summer so that they can fix nitrogen in the soil.

Finding "green" in unexpected places

Today we took a group of 26 homeschooled teens and parents to an outing where they could learn about the hotel industry.

We were treated to pastries and coffee, a short screen show and then taken on a tour of the hotel, back and front office. This is the largest hotel in Cape Town with 536 rooms. After the tour we were enjoyed a finger lunch with some of the executives.

At the kitchen area our guide told us they were "very proud of their waste area", which we couldn't really understand until we went in and saw their operation.

All appropriate waste food is processed through a worm farm. Two large baths are set up in their refuse section (which I must add was spic and span). The worm juice is used in the hotel gardens or given to their staff to use in their home gardens.


All recycled materials are sorted and collected weekly.

As well as these obvious things was something that is even more noteworthy - once used soaps and shampoos/conditioners are donated to an organization that works with street children.


All towels or bedding that is not perfect is sent to homeless shelters.

I know we went for so much more - to open the world of work to our children - but this has left an lasting impression on me.

Well done to this hotel who in a year has gone from nothing to dealing with 60% of their waste! This is the highest benchmark for a city based hotel on our continent!

Creating a herb spiral

Please forgive me for using my blog as an extension of my discoveries and education, but I thought that others may also benefit from my learning journey. So today I have been sitting making a plan for our garden so that Superman and kids can do a lot of the work while I am in the UK next month. (They offered!)

We have decided that the circular beds which I like so much will not work for our space so we will have to go with more rectangular shapes but will build a chook box to fit over the beds for them to clean out when the time is right.

But in my searching around for information on how to make this area a buzzing ecosystem instead of just a vegetable garden I came across these two videos on creating a herb spiral. It makes so much sense to make a herb garden like this and I will definately incorporate this into our plan.

No need to watch the first video all the way to the end (and the music is rather irratating!) but using straw as a bedding material is a great idea...the second video shows a mature herb spiral...just wonderful!





Have any of my readers incorporated a spiral in their gardens? Please let me know!

Urban Permaculture

For those with tiiiiny gardens spend 15 minutes watching these two videos and be inspired....in my searching for information I happened onto these two videos at Youtube on Urban Permaculture Gardening.

This couple has 75 sq m available to grow vegetables and manages to grow 250kg of food per year which is much more intensive than agricultural land. Taking into account that they are in the UK and can only grow food from May - Oct this is a huge achievement. They use a combination of permaculture techniques, forest gardening and companion planting.

It's when I see something like this that I am even more inspired to use the space that I have available for growing food more effectively.

Herein lies the rub...permaculture possibility?

Superman and I have been talking about our last piece of garden. This is an area of lawn with a border of trees. It is the part of the garden where Big White Dog romps widly as he chases cars that come around our corner (even if he can't see them, silly thing!)

We have tried very hard to get lawn to grow here, even buying two sets of roll on lawn over 2 years. Last year we sowed a special type of lawn seed which was doing OK until BWD flattened it and compacted the soil.

This is looking at the area towards the gate.



It is in full sun in Winter until about 3pm when the house shadows it. In summer it is half in shade from the towering Stinkwood in the front yard.

This is the area from the gate to where the previous photo was taken.



Superman wants to pull up the lawn and plant corn and potatoes. I had another plan in mind. I thought of building a raised bed around the wall where I could plant my fruit trees. I would then plant the asparagus in between the trees.

But my brain has been working over this area for quite sometime and I am wondering whether a circular "permaculture" garden wouldn't be better. I am thinking that the fence which you can see on the left of BWD could be completely closed off with a gate and we could make a chook dome and circular beds for our veggies.

This way I can have the raised bed along the wall and we can have more harmonious round pathways wandering through the garden.

The only other problem I have is my clinging to this silly colonial "must-have-lawn" thing in my head. My children are bigger now and don't really play in the garden and the dogs (and children) have ample place to run on the paths and with walks out.

So, here I am thinking aloud....if any of the readers on my little blog have experience with permaculture gardens, then please leave me your comments.

So far I have found these two resources to read through:

Small Farm Permaculture

Permaculture Principals

Caring for perennial Vegetables

I have spent some time this week reading up on how to care for my perennial vegetables, fruit vines and berry canes. My gardening books all talk about adding 2:3:2 and 3:1:5 but as we have successfully managed, for the most part, to grow and feed our veggies organically, I needed to "read between the lines" and see what I could find from natural sources.

These are my perennials that need some TLC at the moment, photos were form last season.

Grape Vine ~ Strawberries ~ Blue Berry ~ Black Berry ~ Lemon and Orange Tree ~ Olive Tree ~ Granadilla Vine ~ Rhubarb ~ Asparagus

I started with the simplest - rhubarb. Our chickens have enjoyed eating all the winter leaves off my humble rhubarb. So yesterday we decided to uproot the 4 plants and put them into a side patch in the fenced garden so that they can yield again in summer. These just needed some compost and water and a replanting.

My asparagus is still in the trailer park and Superman and I are debating their permanent position. Yesterday we trimmed off all the dead fronds and fed them some worm juice. More on worm juice in a moment. In the next two months we need to have them planted in their permanent position.

Our grape vine is still bare, new leaves should appear in about 3 - 4 weeks time. It's time to start watering it with a slow trickle of a hose. It will also enjoy a nitrogen feed about now.



The granadilla vine needs nitrogen now too, as well as some epsom salts. A natural source of potassium like wood ash, or volcanic ash is also a good feed right now. Tomorrow Superman and son are going to make upside down L-shaped brackets so that we can train the vine to grow forwards and the fruit can hand down. At the moment it is trying to lace itself into our electric fence which cause the poor thing to get fried!



For my black berry plant, I was told to feed it a banana smoothie as the flowers start to show. Bananas are high in potassium so when you have over ripe bananas, blend them up, skin and all, and place it around the base of the plant.



Blueberries need an acidic soil and peat moss is the best source for this, unfortunely using peat does not = green gardening. Peat beds are being dug up at a rate faster than it can replesnish istself, so it is best to stear clear of using it in your garden. A great organic substitute is Rooibos mulch or going for a walk in a pine forest and collected some needles. These can just be used around the base of the plant and the acidic residue will leech through to the roots.



Yesterday we repotted our strawberry plants that we grew from the parent plants. We have another 10 or so plants now for this coming season. All fruit plants benefit from SEAGRO or LIQUI-nure. This is where the worm juice comes in. Worm juice is very high in nitrogen and other nutrients. I dilute mine 1 to 10 and feed to my hanging baskets at least once a month. But in the height of summer we don't get enough juice so I do buy liquid feed.

I am toying with the idea of making some KELP TEA as this also is full of wonderful nutrients for my garden.

My olive and citrus tree need to be replanted. They are in big wine barrels at the moment and as soon as we have done our big clear out in the last part of the garden, we will transplant them there.

In my reading I saw that BAT GUANO is brilliant for promoting flowers on fruit trees, so I am going to have to source some of it somewhere....mmmh!?!