. Right now, I have a windowsill that gets afternoon sun, so I am growing culinary ginger and turmeric. This doesn’t necessarily save me a load of money, but it does stop me from ever needing to buy either, and they taste much better than shop bought.
When planning gardens for other people I usually start by asking them what they eat, and we discuss whether it’s worth growing. Here are some really easy ideas to get you started. If all you have is a cracked bucket, or a windowsill, or a small patch of dirt, you can do this. Just growing one pot’s worth of your own food will make a difference.
How much space do you have?
Do you have space for a bucket? Start there. Start with a bucket. Bonus points if it is cracked already (bang in a few holes if not). It can go between your rubbish bins if you want, or on a cracked concrete path that you don’t use..
This was all the outdoor space Zoe Barry had at one flat – enough for three worm bins and pots growing rosemary, leafy greens, mushrooms and lots of coriander.
Zoe Barry
Do you have nothing but a balcony and a doorway? You’ll have space for a pot or two, or even a bucket.
Do you have a somewhat sunny window ledge indoors? You can reuse ice cream containers, or look for long narrow pots.
What about an overgrown garden bed? If you don’t have the energy to clear it, put pots straight on top.
Is your garden fully planted out – got space for a big pot?
Are you flatting, with a compost bin and no space for anything else? Is the compost bin on dirt? Can you plant around it, or take off the doors of the bin at the bottom and plant in there? If the compost bin is full, can you dig up some dirt from the garden, put it on top and plant on top?
Is there space for some pots around your letter box?
A bit broke? Get a broken rubbish bin or knock a bottom out of a rubbish bin (ask on free sites/social media/etc). If you have dirt available to you, you can follow the trenching method and just dig a hole, kicking dirt into it when you put the kitchen scraps in.
How to turn food scraps and weeds into perpetual garden stew
If you have a big enough set of pots (anything from a 9L bucket and up), you can put weeds and food scraps into the bottom of the pots when planting them out. This means you have to buy less dirt/potting mix (which gets expensive) and the scraps/weeds break down to provide new nutrients for your veges.
Zoe Barry put food scraps and weeps into big pots, then planted potatoes on top for the summer.
Zoe Barry
It is 100% okay to use dirt dug out of your garden to fill your pots, unless the dirt is entirely clay or sand. If you have access to a lot of clay, you can just buy a bag of builder’s sand (rougher than dune sand – important) and mix it with the clay to create a much more manageable dirt. Sand requires more compost added in, but unless you live by the beach it’s unlikely that any diggable dirt is sand.
I hate to throw things away, and throwing away dirt feels awful. Once you have a base of potting mix or dirt as described above, you’ll be able to re-use and over use it forever if you need to. You will need to add more ‘inputs’ (fertilisers) which in my situation has always been food scraps and weeds, left at the bottom of the pot, and unconsumed tea/coffee liquid as well as tea leaves/coffee grinds on top.
Do you have some money now, or will you be better off in the future? If you have some money now, set up a compost bin. If you will have some spare dosh in the future, and you really don’t want a compost bin, you will need to keep buying fertilisers.
Making compost now will reap rewards later – you won’t have to buy fertilisers and your plants will grow better.
Kath Irvine / Edible Backyard
The most nutritious things to grow year-round
Silverbeet
Silverbeet is a weather-tolerant leafy green that can be pureed into any soup or sauce. It’s high in iron and vitamin C, and you only need to add a small amount for big nutrition. Kids don’t notice as long as you don’t go overboard. It subs in for lettuce as long as you are not in snobby company. You can get huge bunches of it, put it in the food processor, and push it into ice cube trays. One ice cube per meal (being sneaky) or multiple (where the recipe calls or you can tolerate it more).
Grow and eat silverbeet until you’re sick of it, then move on to growing spinach, says gardener Zoe Barry.
Public domain
All you need to do is either pop seeds or seedlings into your pot. Silverbeet needs some amount of sun – ideally full sun, but it will grow in shady areas. If you have really shady areas, you can sometimes get away with lettuce or kale instead.
Grow silverbeet till you’re sick of it, and when you’re sick of it, grow spinach. If you are a bit fancy or unafraid, grow kale, which grows extremely easily and is a spot more nutritious.
Carrots are easy to grow in a bucket in full sun.
RNZ/Carol Stiles
Carrots
Carrots need full sun, but they areextremely simple to grow if you start with storebought vegetable mix from a garden centre or hardware store.
Oversow them, and keep the seeds moist until they sprout. Lots of people grow carrots in buckets – one seed packet will easily do 4-5 buckets. Start to pull and eat them when they are smaller, you will slowly eat your way to bigger sizes as they grow. You can plant them any time that isn’t summer, so they are good to replace tomatoes, potatoes, summer veg.
Herbs can be added to everything and will happily grow in pots inside or outdoors.
123RF
Herbs
You can add herbs to everything. If you are in low light then grow coriander, parsley and galangal ginger. If you get a lot of light, then thyme, marjoram and oregano will grow everywhere (including inside). Rosemary is an easy one, too.
Parsley grows in any light levels and can go in or on everything. I chop it finely and put it as a garnish on all sorts of things. Parsley needs almost nothing from you, but it takes a full year before it is particularly large/settled- so plant 3-4 plants and ignore it for ages.
Mint will always grow, and is very happy in low light. Peppermint plants mean you never need to buy the tea.
Rhubarb can be grown in a pot and is high in nutrients.
Cory Doctorow/Flickr
Rhubarb
Rhubarb is high in vitamin C and a really good source of nutrients. It’s fine in a pot as long as you keep feeding it liquid fertiliser (or tea leaves, coffee grinds, compost tea, banana skins).
Nodding onions
The bulbs and leaves are edible – more importantly, they look beautiful as well.
Eating what you find kicking around
Do you know what is in your garden? You can eat most of it, including tradescantia (wandering willie) , which tastes a bit like lettuce (I put it in salad or soup/stew instead of silverbeet).
Tradescantia, also known as Wandering Willie, is edible and can be used in salad, soups or stews.
Onion weed is everywhere at this time of year. I use it in place of onion or chives – just chop up the leaves.
Chickweed is really nutritious and yum (but you can’t cook it, eat it in sandwiches or a salad).
Got a bay tree ? Bay trees are absolute thugs that will grow anywhere and grow large. Just snap off a branch and let it dry hanging in your pantry before putting into a little jar in your spice rack.
Kawakawa is a spicy shrub which will add a bit of a kick to Mexican/spicy dishes, can sub in for pepper, and makes a delicious tea.
Fig tree leaves are delicious dried and pureed into flour, you can add up to 1/2 cup instead of flour in most recipes.
Wild fennel is not the aromatic culinary one, but a much milder version. It is good in tea (leaves), salad (leaves) and the seeds are just as good as the spices sold in the supermarkets.
Zoe Barry runs Wellington gardening business The Very Green Gardener . A version of this story first appeared in their blog, Very Good Gardening .
