by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Turning your patio or hard standing garden areas into a fully fledged fruit and vegetable growing factory is not an impossible dream. It is actually one that you can fulfill and that without the need to start breaking up concrete and lifting paving stones.
And there are a number of ways to go about it.
You could take a look at catalogs and websites of passionate garden product innovators such as Harrod Horticultural or you could take hints from other pages and writers, such as myself, as to how do DIY planters to create a productive vegetable garden on hard standing.
With just a little investment in time (and money if you decide to buy your planters and such like) you could be enjoying patio-grown tomatoes, peppers, salads and herbs.
Like with so many things buying everything is not (always) necessary. Much can be made at home with little material and few tools and other resources.
If aesthetics, that is to say looks, are important to you then it will take a little more effort on the DIY front or it will require some extra investment. If not then recycling this and that for use as planters is the way to go. You help your wallet and the Planet at the same time.
Build up a relationship with your local Parks & Gardens Department of your local municipality and you may be able to lay your hands on the 18 and 25 liter tubs (and larger ones even) in which trees come to them for planting. Often they are discarded.
There are, on the other hand, many other things that can easily be re-purposed for use as planters to make your vegetable garden on hard standing, including, and especially if aesthetics are not an issue, the so-called builders bags in which sand, soil and so much else is nowadays delivered to building sites and which go to landfill after use as there is no other way of dealing with then, it would seem. Why waste a great resource, I would say.
And it is not just salads and such that can be grown in this way. Potatoes can be grown in tubs and they do, in fact, extremely well there. Carrots grow well in old shopping carts, I have found, and even fruit trees, though I haven't gotten any in that way, can be grown in containers.
Not having much of a garden and having most concreted over as hard standing does not mean you have to forgo growing your own vegetables and fruit.
There are masses of places on the Internet nowadays that can give you ideas as to what to use, in addition of the ones that I have listed, for planters, and even if those are commercially made, many of them you can reproduce with hammer, nails and some wood.
© 2012
