Yesterday I had to clean up my vegetable garden for the winter season.  It would be a sadder time, except I try to choose a beautiful fall day to do my clean up. – Actually, I stage the job over a few days because my back just isn’t what it used to be.

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.

So, we covered sunlight already – the only thing you can’t do too much about, unless you’re going to cut down a few trees or demolish the neighbours garage, which is probably not a great idea.

The next thing to think about is the question “Why?” as in’ Why do you want to grow your own vegetables?”

If you want access to favoured or hard to find treats like oriental eggplants or thai basil or snow peas that don’t have the texture of cardboard,  or heritage tomatoes- thats one possible reason.

Another is that you’d simply like to grow a few vegetables that you and your family like and ýou want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are organic,  chemical free and as fresh as possible.  Another perfectly valid reason.

Another reason is that, even though you don’t have much room you want a vegetable garden that will make a solid contribution to your families consumption by  improving the quality of what you get and at the same time saving some money.  Value is good.

Or just maybe you’ve simply  been bitten by a desire to grow something, because it will make your soul happy.  Welcome.

Every reason is a good one.  Heck I don’t think there can possibly be a bad reason for growing a vegetable garden.  But if you’re going to be growing on a patio, balcony or deck , space will be at a premium.  If you want to be happy with the result, it won’t hurt to give a little thought to what result you’ll be happy with.

Every reason I’ve outlined will take you down a slightly different path when you plan your own garden- and anything is possible.

If you want to grow vegetables and you don’t have a lot of room, it doesn’t really matter if you have a balcony, a deck, a patio or simply a small unplantable space because what you’ll all have in common is the need to plant your vegetables in containers.

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.

Well, it’s too early to say for sure what works, but I’m getting a feeling for what doesn’t work and I’m sorry to say I need to go back to the drawing board for the larger plants.  The two tubs that I made to hold 3 – 6 large plants each have some challenges and so far, they’re not insurmountable, but I think I have a much better idea for the design.

I shouldn’t have put the aggregated clay at the bottom of the bags, not sure why my brain was dead that day but until the roots reach into it, the clay doesn’t allow the moisture to work it’s way higher up into the bag.  And the roots aren’t likely to reach the bottom when the top and the middle – where they’re living now doesn’t get the nutrient.  I made the same mistake with the pipe gardens, but I used very little aggregate so some of the coir still made contact with the moisture.  This is not to say that any of the plants are doing anything less than thriving- they’re growing like gangbusters!

Even though the hydroponic test plants were 1-2 weeks behind the plants I potted into traditional containers with compost and soil,  they have pretty much surpassed them in size and have started to flower sooner.

The pipe gardens so far are total winners ( a.k.a. nothing has gone wrong yet) I’ve had 3 salads so far from the container greens- very satisfying and once the cukes take off I’d better dig up the pickle recipe again.

I now just need to refine the pipe gardens and figure out the most economical way to produce them- and I need a stand for balconies and patios that don’t have a place to affix them vertically and for people who don’t have the time, tools or the desire or skills to do that kind of job.

Today, I took the first step in setting up my project for the summer and I’m very excited about it. You see, I’ve loved gardening all my life and lately I’ve been really interested in things like small space, urban and container gardens, vegetable gardens, the whole idea of eating as much locally grown food as possible and what are the best ways to make that happen. I put myself in the shoes of someone working outside the home, maybe travelling a lot and maybe living in a condo or simply having only a tiny amount of ground or just a deck to work with.

So, here are the questions my summer project is going to solve:

1. Can I make it easy enough for busy, inexperienced gardeners to successfully grow vegetables in containers on decks, patios and postage stamp yards?

2. What vegetables will give them the best bang for the buck – so to speak?

3. Can they maximize the yield and minimize the work at the same time?

4. How does hydroponics play a role?

5. How can I make it affordable?

I am intrigued at the role that outdoor hydroponic systems can play to solve this problem and when I first started looking into it couldn’t understand why they aren’t used more widely. Now I understand all too well – the currently available systems are too expensive for broad adoption – unless of course your aiming for a far more lucrative cash crop than tomatoes and as far as hydroponics goes right now it’s WAY TOO COMPLICATED.

I want to fix that and that, is the project. I have some tomato seedlings on the way (I hadn’t really thought of my grand plan when I first ordered them) and today I started acorn squash, two types of hot peppers and pickling cucumbers. I have half the seeds started in jiffy pots and the other half in rockwool. I’m going to grow them side by side and compare the results.