Growing fruit and vegetables in very tiny spaces has become very popular recently. Whether you are interested in food security or “wellness”, it has become a trending topic.  I currently have three fascinating books on the subject (see below).  All these books tell you how to construct a raised bed, prepare the soil, and suggest a succession of plants that go well together and will provide vegetables all year round. Two of them suggest a raised bed 1m square i.e. 3 feet square, the third a slightly larger bed, 3m x 1.2m i.e. 10 x 4 feet. I find the concept interesting. You might call it “micro-market-gardening”.

It is easy to see why this has become popular. Too many people now live in houses and flats with hardly any garden space. Many people have very busy lives, with a lot of commitments and no time to dig and weed. We have an aging population. Lots of people don’t have the physical ability to cultivate an allotment, even if they could get one. Digging with fork and spade is quite difficult if you are 90 years old or waiting for a hip replacement. Furthermore, there are long waiting lists for allotments in Britain. Land is in short supply and demand is high. In fact, councils are currently experimenting with dividing the standard 250-300m² allotment into half, quarter, or even smaller sizes.

Obviously, growing food in tiny raised beds and containers is not going to feed the average household, or even one person. Lolo Houbein (page 74) suggests that you could grow one tenth of your vegetables in a one-metre square plot, although this seems a little optimistic to me, especially in the north of Britain. And she reports (page 76) that unspecified  “scientists” have calculated that one person needs a 10 x 10 metre plot to grow all their own food, including staple carbohydrates, and a family of four would need a 20 x20 metre plot. Whether you agree with this or not, I would guess that every little helps. As in World War II, you probably can’t grow enough wheat and potatoes in your garden to make any serious difference, but you can grow a useful amount of veggies. Besides, it’s fun.

Since I got old and decrepit, I have confined my vegetable cultivation to containers and very small raised beds. They probably add up to about 3 square metres of growing space. I use three cheap little fabric raised beds, which are supposed to survive for about ten years, a couple of potato bags and four large-ish flowerpots. I fill them with a mixture of bought compost from the local garden centre, and free compost, which Orkney Island Council gives away at the local recycling centre. Well done them, and many thanks to the very kind attendant who helped me fill my bags and get them into my car. I have managed to grow quite a useful amount of fresh fruit and vegetables in them.

If you are using containers or very small raised beds, you need to water frequently, and maintain the fertility of the soil. The two most important pieces of equipment I have found, apart from the beds themselves, are a compost heap and a water butt. The best thing of all is the small compost bin which now lives beside the kitchen sink, so that I have no excuse for not saving all my vegetable peelings. I saw some lovely water butts in France this Easter, shaped vaguely like a classical pithos (storage jar)…

Raised beds and containers of any shape are easier to position to capture light and warmth. The soil will warm up more quickly in spring and drain more quickly if there is a lot of rain. Which there often is in Scotland. They don’t need a lot of heavy digging; they are easier to weed; they are easier to protect from birds and cats (with a piece of netting); and wind (with a moveable windbreak). Slugs are still a problem, but for containers, I have found that if you can fill them with absolutely fresh compost, smear Vaseline around the rims, and make sure that none of the vegetables droop over the edge as far as the ground, the slugs can’t reach them.

Plants need light as well as warmth, and if you are growing as much food as possible in a 1m square bed, the plants are supposed to be packed close together, with low-growing plants arranged below taller ones. Singapore (see previous post) lies almost on the Equator and therefore receives massive amounts of sunlight, so it is possible to grow a lot of plants in a small space, as in an equatorial jungle. ‘Allotments’ in Singapore are raised beds 2m x 1m, as compared to 250 square metres in the UK.  Since we have much lower light levels in Britain, especially in the north of Scotland, we are unlikely to be able to plant as densely or to grow as much in a small space. It is important to site your beds and containers to get as much light as possible and use any available wall to reflect heat as well as provide shelter from wind. This is much easier to do if you are using containers and raised beds.

Most of my containers are against the back wall of my house, the position which gets the most sunlight, and where during the night the wall can radiate back the heat it has absorbed during the day. I like the idea of laying a sheet of black plastic over your bed in late winter/early spring, to help the soil warm up more quickly at the start of the growing season. Black surfaces absorb more heat than light-coloured ones. All of my fabric raised beds are dark coloured. Although my garden is a little small for a greenhouse, I’m thinking of getting a small cold frame.

In Britain, again as opposed to the Equator, there are distinct growing seasons, and in the north of Scotland they are very short ones. At the beginning of March this year, the weather was so sunny and warm that I was sorely tempted to start planting. I’m glad I didn’t, because the next week it was snowing.  This isn’t unusual for Orkney. I have been re-reading the diary of Patrick Fea, who farmed the lands at Stove at the south end of the island of Sanday in the 18^th century. He recorded the weather at the start of every day’s entry and frequently mentioned snow in March and April.  By the beginning of May things had only just started growing.

I have a small sunny garden to grow things in, but that isn’t actually necessary for micro-market gardening. Nowadays the internet is full of blogs and websites about growing useful quantities of herbs and vegetables in pots on balconies or windowsills or rooftops, in various kinds of planters attached to walls, or climbing up trellises. My personal favourite is “Vertical Veg”.

So if you have the odd 10 minutes to spare, and a container of some sort, grow some lettuce!

“One Magic Square: Grow your own food on one square metre” Lolo Houbein 2015

“Grow all you can eat in 3 square feet: inventive ideas for growing food in a small space” Dorling Kindersley 2015

“Veg in one bed: How to grow an abundance of food in one raised bed, month by month” Huw Richards 2019.

 “The Diary of Patrick Fea of Stove, Orkney, 1766 – 96”, transcribed and edited by W.S.Hewison; foreword by Alexander Fenton