Patio gardening

May 1, 2009 Artical by Eric

Living in a loft in the city gives you a lot of possibilities to build anything you want. We have tons of space, but no yard. Amanda, my girlfriend, and I decided to plant a patio garden this year. Like anything I get involved in, I spent a few weeks reading up on it from all perspectives until I felt competent on the subject. We decided to try a few styles of growing based on my research. That way we'd know what works best for our climate and the amount of daylight our patio gets next time we plant. We built a large planter box, used pots and tried a semi self watering system that I'll most likely discuss in another post.

The plans for the planter box we built were taken from an article out of Ready Made magazine

We wanted to grow carrots so we added an extra 10 inches to the height. This design allowed for a lot of space and the plants all seem to be doing really well so far.

Lettuce, spinach and strawberries as well as some herbs, planted a small herb garden, have been readily available. The first head of broccoli was picked yesterday and there are a few more that are almost ready. The beans need another couple weeks.

So far the only thing we would have done different was to plant only seeds. It was much easier the first time using already sprouted plants but that brought bugs with them as well. They took over the cauliflower and it was tossed out. Bugs will still find there way to your plants but you can prolong this with seeds by not bringing the little pests home from the nursery with you.