10 ways to grow more food
Once you’ve got your vegie patch up and running, the next step is to coax as much food out of your space as you can. PHIL DUDMAN shares some great ways to maximise production
1 Exploit every space
Who said vegie gardens belong in the backyard? Why not utilise the front garden as well, and that sunny pocket down the side of the house? If your council allows, try growing a few herbs and other edibles on the nature strip out the front, sharing them with neighbours. Lots of vegies and herbs look great among flowers in a decorative border, too.
2 Cram them in
You can often get away with planting vegies closer than their recommended spacing. A good way to increase your return is to overplant. Try planting some vegies at half the recommended space, then thin every second one to use as baby vegies when they are semi-mature. This works well with radish, carrot, beetroot, parsnip, turnip and most leafy greens.
3 Practise succession planting
It’s easy to keep up the supply of your favourite vegies in the patch. As you start to enjoy the pickings of a nice row of carrots, lettuce or baby beets, find a spot to lay down another lot. It helps to do a little planning. If you eat two or three pak choy a week, plant a punnet or two every month or so.
4 Fill gaps quickly
Don’t let a perfectly good piece of compost-enriched soil lay dormant. As soon as a gap appears in the patch, fill it with something. The sooner you do this, the sooner you’ll be harvesting something delicious. Start planning your next move the moment you sense that an outgoing crop is approaching the end. The message is: just keep planting!
5 Start seed in punnets
While sowing seed directly in the soil has its benefits, there’s always the chance they might fail due to poor viability or difficult weather conditions, wasting time and valuable space. Think of your patch as prime real estate, reserved for plants that are up and running, healthy and productive. Starting seed in punnets allows you to keep all your seedlings in one place, making it easier to provide optimal conditions. Most can go in the ground at about three weeks from sowing seed. If the spaces aren’t ready, plant the seedlings into small pots and continue to nurture them until some space opens up. This also means you always have something on hand to fill gaps as they appear. The only vegies that need to be sown directly in the soil are carrots and parsnips.
6 Multi-sow seed
Most vegies are grown as single plants, but some perform just as well in small clumps. This allows you to generate considerably higher yields in your allotted space. If you use multicell punnets to raise your seedlings, sow two or more seeds per cell, then plant them out as multi-sown plugs. This approach works well for beetroot (3–4 seeds per cell), onion (4–5), radish and turnip (5–6) and rocket (2–3). Vegies such as cabbage, cauliflower, pak choy and lettuce are better as singles.
7 Use space under fruit trees
If you’re wishing you had more space for growing a pumpkin or watermelon vine, why not let them ramble in the orchard or among shrubs or trees in the ornamental garden? Sweet potato can also be grown among young fruit trees that are establishing, and you can make use of the space to raise perennial crops such as ginger, turmeric and arrowroot.
8 Intercrop plants
You can effectively double your growing area by planting small, quick-growing crops between rows of bigger, slower-growing vegies. By the time the larger ones are big enough to occupy their allotted space, the quick ones have done their thing and are up and out of the ground. If you’re planting zucchini or squash, surround them with turnip, lettuce and other fast-moving leafies. In rows between broccoli, plant quick-growing pak choy, which is ready in just six weeks. Speedy radishes can be tucked in next to just about anything, and upright growers, such as garlic, spring onion and leek, can be slipped in between rows of beetroot. Look for opportunities to plant new crops among outgoing crops, too. Sow carrots in rows between lettuces that are nearing their end, push garlic cloves into the ground between rows of outgoing rocket or turnip, and give cabbage seedlings a head start by planting them at the base of tomato vines that are nearly done.
9 Train your plants
Keeping plants off the ground with a little training creates space for other crops, and this doesn’t just apply to natural climbers such as peas and beans. Melons, cucumber and pumpkin can be trained up a trellis. Tomatoes are commonly staked, but you can also support capsicum and eggplant to stop them flopping onto the ground. Similarly, broccoli plants can be supported with a few short stakes to stop them encroaching on their neighbours.
10 Make use of containers
Should you run out of space in the patch, or have none to start with, grow some of your crops in pots. Containers can be grouped on a patio, deck or balcony, hung on a fence, wall or balcony railing to create a vertical garden, or installed as a window box. You can grow lots of vegies in pots, but the smaller, easy-to-grow plants are best when starting out. Try plants such as lettuce, rocket, asian greens, radish, spring onion and herbs. Also, why not grow some spuds in a big grow bag.