How can you have your very own Korean Hornbeam trees or small white cucumbers or striped tomatoes? Start them from seed! Really, it’s the only way, unless you happen to be living close the worlds most exotic nursery.

The best part of all of this is that, when you’re talking about vegetables (and annual flowers) starting from seed is not at all complicated. In fact it’s easy.

So why are so many people convinced that it can’t be done and why are some people not successful. Two reasons I can think of.
1. Failing to follow simple instructions.
2. Failing to pay attention.

So, the flip side is that all you need to do is follow some simple instructions and pay attention.

The seed pack will tell you if you need to cover the seeds or not. Typically, very small seeds won’t be covered because they need light to germinate. They simply get sprinkled on and then pressed into the surface of the starting mix. You’ll notice I said starting mix and not soil. You can make your life a little easier from the get go and use one of the soiless seed starting mixes which have a better texture than most garden soil and are also sterile and that’s important too, because it will help to prevent “damping off”which is a disease that can kill seedlings.

If the pack says not to cover the seeds – don’t cover them. If it says to plant them 1/8th of an inch deep- don’t stick them an inch into the ground and expect them to ever see the light of day.

If it says to keep them warm, keep them warm and ditto for cool. Figure out the not too fine line between bone dry and soaking wet. It might take a little practice, but trust me- it’s quite possible.
So – step one is ready the flippin’ instructions and follow them.

Step 2 is pay attention! Once you’re seeds have sprouted – which for most vegetables will be within a week or so, check them every day. Just look to see that they’re not too wet and they’re not too dry. What you want are chubby, stocky little seedlings as opposed to tall, wobbly, spindly little guys that only grow like that because they don’t have enough light.

If you pay close attention to them, there’s a really good chance that as time goes by it will get easier and easier to look after them because rather than feeling a obligation to see if the little suckers are dead yet, you’ll be grabbed by a wave of curiosity to see what your plants are doing. They will become familiar friends and you’ll find that there is something very rewarding by starting at the beginning.

Although I successfully grew hot peppers last year, some of them came in just under the wire and I tend to favour short season tomatoes. Crops (although “crops” seems like a bit of an exageration when describing the amount to be grown in containers) that I will probably never try include such long season goodies like cantalopes and honeydew melons.

Respecting your growing season and what you would like to grow also means that some vegetables like spinach will grow early and late in the season, but not during the “dog days”of summer – although last summer in Toronto we didn’t have anything like that.

Look, if I talk too long here, all that will happen is that I’ll make a very simple idea much too complex and instead of helping you grow something great to eat on your balconies or decks or patios, I’ll just scare you off.

That is NOT my plan. So I’ll wrap up with this. Do just a little bit of research on the length of your growing season and get a feeling forthe things that just need more time to grow than your summer will allow.

If you have a balcony or a patio or deck or even a postage stamp sized backyard there is only one non-negotiable requirement to grow your own vegetables. What you need is light. You need a spot with at least 5 hours of direct sunlight every day – unless you want to bring it all indoors and grow them under lights – and come to think of it – if you want – I can show you how to do that.

There is nothing you can do that is more in keeping with a long list of “it’s about time” trends than sweep off your deck or balcony take out some containers and use them to grow organic produce for your own table. Not only is it tastier than what you’ll buy in the store, it’s waiting for you, literally on your doorstep. Besides, when you release your hidden gardener, you might also find out why gardening is such a hugely popular hobby. It’s a calming, infinitely rewarding pastime that you might fall in love with. I did.

I started my first garden when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Everything died, from a combination of ignorance, neglect and the simple fact that my dad, anticipating my possible shortfalls as a beginner gardener allotted me a corner of the yard that were missing both rain and sun. I didn’t really care and over the years kept trying.

Right now I’m living in rental accommodations and don’t have any ground to call my own. I stopped putting gardens into my landlord’s yard because every time I moved I got to watch the next tenant kill my labor of love and I swore I’d never do it again. But, recently my interest in vegetable gardening was rekindled when I discovered an awesome technique for growing vegetables in containers. Using a gravity-fed, hydroponic system that is almost criminally easy to maintain, I harvested a wealth of peppers, tomatoes and simply the best salad greens that I’ve ever enjoyed and it was 100% organic.

If you’re still reading, I’m gathering that the idea interests you. So stay with me and I’ll tell you exactly how to do it…..although it’s going to take a few articles.

Step 1

How to Choose What to Grow

While there are a lot of things that can easily be grown in containers, some plants don’t do nearly so well. Luckily, the most popular vegetables including tomatoes, peppers and salad greens are excellent choices. I’m devoted to indeterminate tomatoes – that’s the kind that grow as a vine, as opposed to a bush. Yes you need to tie them up but having grown the special patio tomatoes in the past; I will personally never waste my time or my very precious space on them again.

I’ve also had decent luck with cucumbers although not such great results with squash. I don’t think they cared much for getting their roots cramped and any plant that needs a root run the size of Oklahoma will not be a great choice for containers.

Peas will do well, although they are a fairly short season crop and even more so given the extra warmth they’re experience in a container. If you’re going to grow beans – I’d suggest going with the pole beans even though I’m not sure they’re quite as tender as the bush variety, but the simple truth is that the bush beans just don’t give you the return on your space and seeding progressive crops is not as practical in a container garden as when you have lots of room in the ground.

Corn is a non starter and similarly I would also stay away from broccoli, cauliflower, and sprouts – something for which my son is eternally grateful. You also don’t want to try anything that has serious rambling issues like watermelon and I don’t recommend root crops either – meaning carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beets, turnips, radishes or parsnips. You can’t grow asparagus in containers either.

If you don’t know anything about growing vegetables and you’ve never done it before, advice like “vines are good” isn’t going to be much help. So maybe I should step back for a minute and approach this question from a different perspective. Try this on for size, “grow what you can’t easily buy”.

Yes, you can buy tomatoes – but the tomatoes you can buy in the stores have been selected for qualities which appeal to agri-business. For example – tomatoes that are going to be trucked across half a continent – or more- need to have fairly tough skins so they don’t get mashed to a pulp – yummmmmmy. They need to be picked when they’re green and ripen in a truck. They need to stand up well to refrigeration. They need to be uniformly sized so that they pack well and display easily in a grocery store. If you’re growing your own tomatoes – none of these things matter!

You can have plum tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beefsteak sized tomatoes, grape tomatoes in a range of colors and sweetness levels that will simply amaze you. If you’re not a gardener already, then you’re probably not familiar with the craze that is heirloom vegetables. Oh what a wonderful surprise you have in store. I grow lots of tomatoes – surprisingly I’m not a huge fan of big chunks of tomato. But I love little grape tomatoes in Greek salads and I’ve found that oven dried cherry tomatoes packed in olive oil with basil are like eating candy.

Peppers are terrific – because there are so many different kinds of them – especially if you like hot peppers.

Salad greens – Mesclun mix – Baby salad greens – you know the ones I mean. They cost about 16 bucks a kilo and 9 times out of 10 the ones in the grocery store have already started to wilt. I don’t know about man – but woman cannot live on iceberg alone!

Other great small space crops include Chinese greens, eggplant, kale, spinach and Swiss chard. And then of course a simply wonderful idea is to also grow herbs – some of which – like parsley and cilantro also make great salad greens.  Basil is another example of a crop available in a mind numbing variety. I love Thai basil.

Oregano, thyme, chives, tarragon, marjoram and sage are all perennial herbs, which mean that they will live from year to year. Sadly, that makes them a not too good choice for a container garden since plants which can survive the (Toronto) winters in the ground will not necessarily do so in a container on a balcony. Ironically, rosemary, which is also perennial but one too tender to survive the Toronto winters in the ground can easily spend those winters on a windowsill and go back out next spring.

But what I’ll say right now is, “if you really want a perennial herb, and it’s easy for you to find the plants, give them a try and we’ll touch back on the subject before the fall of 2010 and talk about how you can get them through the winter. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

To help you begin to make your decision about what you might want to grow, here is a list of websites that offer herb and vegetable seeds. Take a look at what they have to offer and make some choices – you’ll probably choose too many, but that’s ok. You haven’t ordered them yet.

http://www.heirloomtomatoes.bizland.com/

http://eternalseed.ca/index.php?ID=1&Lang=En Canada only

http://victoryseeds.com/

http://www.seedsavers.org/

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/catalog/seed_menu.html

http://www.heritageharvestseed.com/

http://www.uharvest.ca/zenstore/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=21

http://www.richters.com/

http://www.stokeseeds.com/cgi-bin/StokesSeeds.storefront

http://www.dominion-seed-house.com/en-CA

Now, if you’re thinking that come spring, almost every grocery store in the city will be offering trays of little vegetable plants that you can grow, you’re absolutely right. Some of them will have a simply excellent range of choices too and if you want to go that route, you certainly can. But at some point you’ll probably want to grow something that you can’t find unless you start it yourself. So for now, you don’t need to make an absolute decision, check out the seeds and if you’re just not ready to make this leap yet, you can always start with pre-started plants.

I pulled the beefsteak tomato, green bell pepper, Brandywine tomato and flat leaf parsley – each in their own one gallon pot (which is only 6″x 6.5″high) from the planter they shared with a single gravity feed valve.  Of all the hydroponic designs I played with this summer this simple configuration – 4 pots in a single tray, with a single valve, from a single purposed nutrient reservoir- was the most successful.

when I pulled the plants from the pots, I was gratified to see the kind of solid mass of roots that you’ll be shown in any picture that demonstrates what a root bound plant should never look like.  But since I had no intention of either increasing the pot sizes, planting them into the ground or extending the life beyond a single growing season the solid mass of roots was good news to me becuase the purpose of the exercise was to confirm that – You Can Grow a Full Sized Tomato or Pepper in a Six Inch Pot!

OK,  so neither the beefsteak tomatoes nor the peppers will yield Fall Fair Blue Ribbon sized fruit ( yes they’re fruit!)  but they will yield a steady, generous crop of food – and you can do it in the lowest maintenance container garden that you can imagine.

Since I’m about the worlds worst artist,  I won’t be sketching out the designs but I’m going to create a PDF with photos to show how to make these gardens.  I hope that for anyone who would love to grow their own organic vegetables and herbs, but don’t have the space to plant a garden – these designs will set you along the road to your first harvest.

I’ll post information about the designs here – and probably post the PDF on my ecommerce bonsai site – Zen Garden Bonsai.

Oh – the flat leafed parsley is actually still good until a hard frost takes it out – here’s a shot of what it looks like.

First it was a matter of getting rid of the overly complicated mixing and balancing of nutrients that are an inherent flaw with traditional hydroponic systems.  At least they’re a flaw if you want to get regular consumers interested.  Then it was about ditching the reliance for electricity – and luckily both of the first two problems had the same solution.  I thought the gravity fed valves were my answer but now I’m not so sure.  I think they’re overpriced and I can’t seem to do anything to bring the prices down and they are still a mechanical element that is subject to a few hiccups.

If it doesn’t work flawlessly, it can’t be foolproof and I want foolproof.

The second season is starting and the new lettuce garden is still hydroponic, still small space, still organic – but this time it might also be foolproof, too.  You see, I’ve ditched the valve for now and I’m working on something that is sooooooo simple – if it works – it will take the container and balcony gardening world by storm.  On the other hand – maybe I’m about to find out why this technique hasn’t found broader adoption.

I’ll let you know.

And everyone is working with the same simple equalizer- sunlight.  If you want to grow vegetables you need sunlight and lots of it and preferably you need sun morning – noon and afternoon.

The amount of sunlight you get is the number one factor you need to take into consideration if you want to grow vegetables in containers and it’s probably the only consideration that you won’t be able to find a work-around for.

I’d say as a rule of thumb your bare minimum to grow vegetables is 5 hours of direct light and I mean direct afternoon sun.  A spot that only gets morning sun simply will not cut it- sorry.  So think of sun from lunch to 5 and remember that’s the minimum.  You’ll get growth and a few things will grow reasonably well- but most of your plants will never hit their maximum potential unless they get the light all day.

This is especially true of tomatoes. They are -without a doubt -the numero uno vegetable choice, which you have to admit is a little ironic since technically, tomatoes are not a vegetable- they’re a fruit. sorry I couldn’t resist.