An Unlikely 'Garden-bed' Fellow

If you are a regular visitor to my blog, you will probably get used to me talking up the benefits of planting, maintaining and reaping the benefits from a home grown veggie patch, a trend that seems to be on the increase as more and more people make the connection between the quality of the food they eat and their wellbeing.
In my work as a Freelance Gardener. I've assisted many a client in the setting up of a 'fruitful' veggie patch, many of them created in small spaces as busy or aging people opt more and more for unit type dwellings with only a courtyard as their garden space.
An apparent lack of space is no barrier to fulfilling the desire to 'grow your own,' in fact I've seen some fantastic crops grown in containers that were never designed to hold such things.
One of the best ideas I've seen is the utilisation of wooden pallets set up as either as vertical gardens or laying flat on the ground on a concrete or paved area.
A few years ago, in my attempt to create more garden space, I brought 3 wooden pallets into my yard, covered the bottoms and sides with shade cloth secured with heavy duty staples and filled them with a good quality garden soil from the local garden supply centre. This gave me a huge amount of extra space in which I successfully grew Butter Lettuce, Dwarf Beans, Baby Carrots and a fantastic selection of herbs.
Vertical gardens are another way of utilising space that would normally be left bare and again, wooden pallets are a great way to achieve this. Strawberries thrive in a vertical garden as the overhang gives the fruiting tendrils room to 'droop' and as the fruit has no contact with the soil, it stays lovely and clean. Protecting the fruit from the birds with netting is still a must.
Another great idea is container gardening, any container. I've been growing Lebanese Zucchini in some discarded wooden dressing table drawers this season with great success. There are so many vegetable varieties out there now in either dwarf form or that simply lend themselves to this type of growing container. Even the successful growing of a compact variety of Tomato plant in a medium to large pot may be enough to inspire you to expand on the size of your veggie patch.
I promise you, the flavour of a home grown Tomato or Strawberry will be enough to entice you to consider setting up a veggie patch if you haven't already done so.
Happy gardening.

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