High intensity farming, what crops, for a small space.

[combat squirrel]

Hi all, so I live in a house with a conservatory and a small yard, essentially im limited to pots/plastic tubs. The end of my yard is also 15ft above some waste land on a hill below it I have a strong wooden fence around my yard, so Im thinking of hanging some bins/plastic tubs over the edge of that above the waste land and attaching them to the fence to grow runner beans from.

My question is, if you had a small space to work with, but wanted to get the maximum amount of growing ability out of it – what would you do?

Im thinking of growing bean sprouts in another part of my house.

What plants species have a quick turn over and decent nutritional value?

Im thinking so far I can grow runner beans, beansprouts, carrots, (1 tub) of potatoes (high water required) things like that, no tomatoes or other plants that are high maintenance for what you get.

My current working plan is to build myself wooden ‘shelves’ around the edge of my hard, 2ft wide, 1.5ft of soil, 2 levels, lower level around 2-2.5ft of airspace before the next shelf. I need to extract the MAX amount of food stuffs from that…….also the ‘lower shelf’ on one side of the yard will be shaded – so plants that don’t mind shade……..the lower shelf on the other side is south facing so sun will get to both levels.

I also want to grow very fast growing species of (suitable) lettuce as I have 4 guinea pigs – pets now, livestock/food should SHTF.

It is a fairly unusual setup, granted, but that’s the fun as well, a challenge.

What species would you grow? ALSO any species I can mix ? to densify and maximise the use of the soil (some root veg with top growing veg above).

Soil nutrients ill provide with suitable nitrogen, and fertilizers (Ill stock up incase SHTF)

I can’t really move, so would like to think about this setup, also it’s nicely defendable as it’s a yard that’s high over a large waste land hill, next door either way I’d have to defend but that’s life.

Happy to provide a build log once planned out

Thoughts welcome

[junmist]

oh wast ground Im a bit of urban gruerrilla gardening there throw some seeds over your fence also look out for edible weeds which you wont have to do any gardening for. If you have a bit of shade why not grow some mushrooms (protin along with the ginipigs) You might want to find out about companion planting the traditional one is sweetcorn beans and squashes. The sweetcorn serves as a trellis for the beans to climb; the beans fix nitrogen for the sweetcorn and the squashes keeps the moisture in and suppresses the weeds. So you end up haveing three crops in the space of one crop hope this helps some

[Maddie_cat]

Its what the Indians call The Three Sisters Junmist.

CS - might be worthwhile investing in Square Foot Gardening: How to grow more in less space. Interesting concept and I have had some success with it.

[Arzosah]

The other system you might want to look at is permaculture - you can think about it various ways - the plants you use most often are nearest to the house (zoning) and there are layers too - roots and tubers in the ground itself, ground cover plants like low growing mint and chamomile, small shrubs, large shrubs, fruit trees trained as cordons or ballerinas, and climbers growing through them, check out this sort of website: http://www.permaculture.org.uk/

Hope this helps.

[combat squirrel]

That's great thanks everyone, got myself a copy of square foot gardening to start off with, seems ideal.

Ill build my garden over winter, and hope I get another year opportunity to grow things.

[jansman]

A 12" pot will support 1 seed potato. And yield a couple of pounds. Worth doing. You can even put soil in black bin bags and do the same. Climbing beans are good too for the space used.