Garden Harvest: Patio Container Crops

The trend for growing your own food shows no sign of abating. Home-grown crops are cheap and nutritious and you know exactly what has gone into them – you can’t get more organic than that. If you haven’t got the space or the time to invest in a vegetable patch there are plenty of plants that will grow in planters and containers on your patio. Here’s our guide to growing low-hassle container crops.

Top Crops for Patio Containers

The easiest crops to grow in containers are everything that you might associate with a summer salad. Lettuces, tomatoes, beetroot, radishes, spring onions and carrots are all crops that will thrive in container pots.

Sun or Shade

Some crops can’t handle the full glare of the summer sun. Make sure that your salad greens have some shade as their delicate leaves will wilt in the sunshine. Tomatoes on the other hand need as much strong sun as possible.

The Right Soil Mix

Understanding soil types is the key to growing good vegetables. The good thing about growing in container pots is that you can fill them with the perfect type of compost for the plant that you are growing. Soil can be loam, clay, sand or some combination of these three. It is also categorised by how acid or alkaline it is and how well it drains. As a rule of thumb, vegetables like loamy, slightly acidic soil that drains well.

Regular Watering

Unless they are looking really thirsty, you will only need to water your patio crops on days when it’s not raining. Here’s a guide to the basics for some popular container crops.

Vegetable	Sun/Shade	Soil Type	Water
Lettuce	Shade	Neutral	When Soil is dry
Tomato	Sun	Slightly Acidic	Twice Daily
Beetroot	Shade	Slightly Acidic	Daily
Radish	Sun	Well-Drained	Daily
Spring Onion	Bit of Both	Well-Drained	When Soil is dry
Carrot	Bit of Both	Sandy	Daily

When we build a patio, we can include any feature that you would like. A built-in border of raised beds for growing veggies is no problem at all. Tell us what you want to grow and we can work out together the best layout to give you a bumper crop from your raised beds and patio containers. For more information about our paving and landscaping services, please get in touch. You can call us on 01603 360548 or email any queries to enquiries@knightslandscaping.co.uk.

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