Productive Gardens in Small Spaces

Living in a city lot, we don’t have all that much room to grow veggies.   Sure, we could rip out the lawns and plant

rows, but that would be a huge undertaking and upset Shasta, our dog.  So we have taken to planting where we can and have had some success growing in borders, containers, and in a spot designated for herbs.

Gardens Don’t Need to take up a lot of Space

While that’s contrary to my dream of a very large garden, it’s true that you can successfully garden just about anywhere.  Recently we installed what  I have termed the salad wall.  The new found space was the result of ripping out an old rotting wood fence covered in cat claw vines, and replacing with a block wall.

Once the vines were gone, we could see the potential of this new space.  Narrow and long, this 1.5 foot x 40 foot ribbon of dirt runs alongside the south side of our driveway that joins the street to our detached garage.    This space was originally wrapped in railroad ties, and while they are perfectly acceptable, they were in sad shape and I had designs on a brick border.  So after a weekend of slinging mortar and bricks, and popping Advil for my aching back, we had a nice raised bed to start the salad wall.

Now when you garden in a climate like Phoenix has, you learn that location is king and the directions on the plants are meant for somewhere else.  Full sun plants tend to get part shade, and if you are brave enough to try gardening all summer long, you had better learn how to plant in a manner that shelters your more sensitive plants.  Our bed will be on the north side of a 6 foot block wall which means it gets little to no sun in winter, and gets cooked in summer, so here’s what we did:

We started the bed with lots of great soil.  The base of the planter was very sandy from the installation of the floating paver driveway, so we had pretty good drainage.  The soil was mixed to a depth of about a foot using a trenching shovel and hoe.

(You will want a trenching shovel if you plant in narrow spaces as they are only 4 – 5 inches wide.)  We then planted two varieties of grape vines (Thompson Seedless and Flame Reds) which grow great here and will provide a canopy and some much needed shade for the peak of summer when the sun is directly overhead and will die back in winter when the sun is not so intense.

Then we planted a 6-pack of sweet 100s tomatoes, Spinach, Butter Crunch lettuce, and red snail lettuce.

The goal is to swap out plants all season long that will do well in the northern exposure and rotate the crops as needed. We then topped the whole bed in a unique mulch made of cocoa pod shells.  It’s amazingly light and looks a lot like gravel when down, but mad the whole yard smell like chocolate when we first installed it. The sent has since abated.  It appears to be wonderful mulch for water retention, but w e are afraid that it doesn’t let in enough air as the surface is getting moldy.  Since noticing this, we have cut back the water, turned the mulch, and are waiting for higher temps to kick in.  Today was 85 degrees, so I don’t expect the mold to hang out much longer.

What I forgot to do was run a length of tubing through the bet to irrigate.

So once the lettuce is done, I will pull drip irrigation through the bed before planting the next round.

More to come on gardening in small spaces…

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