Harrison - Vegetable, fruit and herb growing in small spaces

VEGETABLE, FRUIT AND HERB
GROWING IN SMALL SPACES

John Harrison, who has been described as Britains greatest allotment authority (Independent on Sunday), lives in the north-west of England with his wife Val. The shortage of available space in their garden led to their growing fruit and vegetables in containers on their small concrete patio. Although now their two allotments provide much of the food they eat, they still grow herbs and salad crops in pots at home. They also enjoy their own homemade bread, butter, jams and chutneys, as well as home reared eggs, and often drink their own beer and wine.

John runs two popular websites: www.allotment.org.uk and www.lowcostliving.co.uk. He is the author of four other books in the Right Way series:

Vegetable Growing Month by Month

The Essential Allotment Guide

Low-Cost Living - Live better, spend less

and, together with wife Val, Easy Jams, Chutneys and Preserves.

Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com

First published by Right Way, an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2010

Copyright John Harrison, 2010

The right of John Harrison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-7160-2245-9

Printed and bound in the EU

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Over the 30 years Ive been growing our own fruit and vegetables weve not always been fortunate enough to have a large garden to grow in. As a general rule, the more modern the house, the smaller the garden seems to be. Our first house, being a standard pre-war semi, had a 100' x 30' back garden but, as the years have moved on, builders have crammed more and more houses per acre so that now a house valued at a kings ransom has a garden space no bigger than many of the back to back terraced houses of yesteryear.

Currently we have a postage stamp garden but Im fortunate to have an allotment around the corner to grow in but, with an estimated 100,000 people on waiting lists for a plot nationally, thats ceasing to become an option for most of us. Still, if you seriously want to grow your own, its worthwhile checking what is available in your area.

The house we lived in before had a reasonable garden on a slope but the previous owner had made it into a series of concrete patios and terraces. There was one small soil border but otherwise just a lot of concrete. It was actually more attractive than it sounds with dwarf walls and pastel painting, but hardly a gardeners garden.

This set me a challenge to say the least. The prospect of hiring road digging jack-hammers to dig it up and skips to cart away the resulting rubble was hardly appealing. Not only would it have been a lot of work but financially costly as well.

Having thought about it, I realized that the only answer was to grow in containers. After all, the show growers with their superb specimens of perfect vegetables at shows like Chelsea and Tatton Park rarely stoop to planting in soil. Most of their growing is done under cover in containers so I knew it was possible. If you can grow flowers in a pot, why not vegetables?

Now Im not into token growing. We like to eat as much of our own produce as possible. There are few things more satisfying than sitting down to a meal where most if not all of the food on the plate has been grown and raised yourself.

Im not a strictly organic grower by any means but that doesnt mean I want to eat food loaded with pesticide residues that cannot be tasted, in fact that can only be detected by sophisticated chemical analysis. The government may assure us they are safe but nobody really knows if the combination of chemicals does us any harm.

Its fairly easy to find out what a safe level is for any particular chemical. Crudely, feed some to laboratory rats and see how much it takes to kill them. But if we have a little of this chemical, a smidgeon of that chemical and then throw yet another into the mix, nobody does know how dangerous the food we eat is in the long term. This is generally referred to as the cocktail effect. With hundreds of different chemicals, the combinations run into the astronomical.

By growing your own you are in control. You know exactly what, if any, chemicals have gone into producing your food. Unlike the farmer, you can afford the time to use organic methods. There is no way around it, generally organic growing takes more labour than chemical growing. When you see organic produce in the supermarket, the question isnt why it is expensive; the question is how do they manage to do it for the price they do!

I believe growing your own, even just a small portion of what you eat, is important. Its a move towards self-sufficiency and freedom from a system that would reduce us to mere consumers. It creates a relationship between us and the seasons, reconnecting us with the world in a more concrete way than just deciding if we need to wear a sweater or carry an umbrella.