Top Crops - Beans

I bought one of those cheap arch frames from the garden centre and planted it in 2 large pots (each is about 40cm x 40cm) - and it frames one of our windows.

I'm growing the bean plants indoors at the moment - a mixture of black french beans, green french beans and some runners. By mid June it should look lovely with a thick covering of green leaf and lovely purple, white and red flowers. Will plant the plants outside in the next couple of weeks. I usually put about 8 plants in each pot and put some seeds in at the same time to get a longer harvest.

I think beans are my favourite pot crop, they look nice, the beans taste delicious and the more you pick the more beans appear!

The pic on the right is from June the first year I grew them to give you an idea how it looks. I've put more plants in in subsequent years to make the coverage thicker (and the crop better of course!)

If you have a bit of ground space, or maybe even a raised bed, you could easily make a 'bean teepee' the kids can hide in. There's a step by step at http://www.kiddiegardens.com/bean_teepee.html

You could even make a teepee by planting the poles in containers in a circle shape, but I guess it might not be very stable and one rough kids game could send it tumbling...

What to grow

I've done a bit of experimenting over the last couple of years and refined what is best for me to grow with the space I have, but of course the 'best' crops are the ones that suit you best - no point growing a mass of french beans if you're not a big fan of eating them (at peak season we resort to having frequent dinners of a big plate of steamed beans with a fried egg on top just to get through them!) Some things to consider though:

1 - What you love to eat - home grown stuff always more delicious than shop bought, so I think best to simply grow the fruit and veg you love and enjoy eating.

2 - Yield for the space you're using. I've grown pumpkins a couple of times, but as much as I love pumpkin, it's just not worth allocating a whole container for a whole season to get one of two tiddlers... I've ruled out peppers this year for the same reason.

3 - How the plants look. If you treasure your tiny outdoor space, you probably don't want it to be overrun with loads of ugly plants, even if they do yield some tasty produce. But of course it's a balance; courgettes can be pretty ugly, but I forgive that because they are good croppers, don't need too much space and always give a yummy yield.

So, my top ten, and the stuff I'll be growing this year (I'll try to do a separate post on each):

1 - Beans (French beans and runners)

2 - Cherry tomatoes

3 - Salad stuff

4 - Sugar snap peas

5 - Courgettes

6 - Strawberries

7 - Carrots

8 - Peaches

9 - Herbs

10 - Chillies

My patch

To give you an idea or what sort of yield you can get from your small space - our balcony is about 2.5m by 5m, we have a table and chairs, BBQ and a large worm bin out there, keep our bikes out there and still have a bit of space for our three year old daughter to do running rounds, have her paddling pool out etc. Basically our crops in pots are just around the edges, so I'm a long way short of maximising all possible growing space!

Even so, the last couple of years we've enjoyed; juicy peaches and strawberries, more french beans than you can shake a stick at (I can pick a huge handful one day and there's another huge handful to be gathered again a couple of days later) masses of delicious cherry toms (and some rather delicious green tomato chutney made by a friend at the end of the season), loads of courgettes, sugar snap peas, chillies, radishes, peppers, pumpkins, carrots, spinach, swiss chard, various herbs and lots of different salad leaf.

My actual growing space consists of 2 large pots (about 40x40cm), 2 medium ones (about 35x35cm), 4 smallish ones (about 30x30cm), a couple of window boxes and hanging baskets, a strawberry planter and then just various small pots filling the gaps. I went for large square pots to maximise space. If you're really serious about maximising yield, you could allocate a whole area of the balcony to a raised bed. Personally I prefer the flexibility of pots which can be moved around etc.

!!!! Remember, you should always check the weight bearing ability of your balcony before putting out lots of heavy raised beds, or even big pots!!!!

There are some great books about gardening in small spaces which can give you ideas to really maximise your crop. I've got 'The Edible Container Garden' by Michael Guerra and 'Crops in Pots' by Bob Purnell. The first has a really good section with all the fruit and veggies that grow well in pots, minimum container depths for each, basic techniques etc and the second is full of little 'container projects' and some recipe ideas for using the resulting produce.

Here are the amazon links for ref:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edible-Container-Garden-Fresh-Spaces/dp/1856752208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274001701&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crops-Pots-Container-Projects-Vegetables/dp/0600615510/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274002123&sr=1-1

My balcony allotment

A couple of years ago, my mum got an allotment. As soon as she started raking the produce in, I started to get jealous... We live in a flat in Hackney with no garden, but thankfully with a decent sized balcony, so I decided to have a go at growing some fruit and veggies in containers. This is my third growing season and thought I'd keep a blog to share how it's all going, and maybe even inspire others to make the most of their limited growing space!