How even a complete amateur can set up a patio vegetable garden.

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A couple of months ago I decided to have a go at growing a few vegetables, I've always fancied growing my own veg since growing a few plants of a, ahem, 'different' variety back in my university days but I never got around to it.  So here I am a few years later in a rented house with a small patio thinking to myself that it's about time I got off my ass and realised one of my dreams, just a couple of problems.  1. space and 2. getting my deposit back if I turn my landlord's garden into a veg patch.  So I did a bit of digging around on the net and most people seemed to think that there are plenty of things you can grow in limited space and still get a decent crop so I figured 'what the hell, I'll give it a go'.

Like I said before I'm about 2 months in and things are going fairly well, take a look at a few photos:

I decided, don't ask why, to go with potatoes, tomatoes, aubergines, bellboy peppers, cayenne peppers, jalapeno peppers, carrots, coriander and basil.  The only things I did from seed were the potatoes, coriander, basil and jalapenos, the rest I bought as seedlings for about £1 except for the tomato plant which my Dad started from seed and gave to me (a bit of a yearly tradition as my parents are always away from home just as the tomato plant needs serious attention).  As you can see the plants don't take up too much room and don't seem to be suffering from being grown in pots and not in the ground.

All of the plants are just using regular pots except for the potatoes which I bought some potato planters for, I bought these as they're reusable and large enough to get several potato seeders in each bag.  I thought about doing a step by step guide to setting the garden up but in reality it was so simple it would read like this:

1. Buy pots and soil
2. Put seeds/seedlings into soil
3. Water
4. Harvest

I'm not kidding it really is that simple, I didn't need to read a book or visit and guides on the net, I just used common sense.  There are a few hints I can give due to my trial and error approach, I'm guessing most of you will know this already but here goes.  When growing the seedlings keep them indoors until the first frosts have gone (I've heard people have had problems with chilli plants outdoors so I left them out during the day and brought them in at night to help acclimatise them for the first few days) and make sure they're kept out of draughts in the house.  When re-potting go for the biggest pot you're going to need so you don't keep stressing the plants by continuously re-potting them and in the new pots add a few gravel chips to the bottom, it'll help with drainage so they don't suffer from over watering.  On that note, don't over water the plants they don't like it, some of the plants drink a lot, some don't, also they'll drink more as they get bigger (like I said common sense) I found that watering the plants when the very top of the soil was dry kept the plants healthy with no signs of over watering.  Feed the plants once a week, I use Miracle grow organic tomato feed which all the plants love, the bottle says only to feed after flowering starts but I gave even the seedlings a heavily diluted feed mix and they certainly haven't suffered for it, as they've got bigger I just diluted the feed less and less until I was giving them the feed it suggests on the packaging.  Keep the plants somewhere where they'll get some shade during the day and the sun moves, I know that plants love the sun but on the really hot days I found that the plants tended to wilt a bit if they were left in full sun for the whole day, also they were more prone to drying out meaning that if I didn't check regularly they could have dried out completely.  Check for pests and treat them accordingly, this was probably the only part that I had to look up as one of them plants got aphids, I found a post online that simply said to pour water over the plant at night and the aphids would just fall off and die - problem solved.

Most of the plants are starting to show signs of the vegetables so it shouldn't be long now before I can harvest a few things and see if the outlay was worth it.  All in I think I spent about £50 to set this all up including the seeds so I may not get that back in veg this year but almost all of the stuff I bought is reusable so after a couple of seasons it will have paid for itself.