About half our backyard is taken up by pool and patio so the patch of grass isn’t big enough to support a vegetable garden. The solution? Plant a patio garden in containers. There’s even a great book on the subject. In SoCal I can have a patio garden year round. I planted tomatoes over the winter and just harvested the last of them yesterday. This afternoon I harvested beets for an interesting beet salad recipe I got from Dr. Weil’s website. Here are my beets and greens, all cleaned and ready to go in the pot of salted, boiling water:
The beets (in the bowl) are for the salad. I’ll stir fry the greens in a little olive oil with some garlic and squeeze a little lemon after they’re cooked for another dinner. Not everyone likes beets but I do and I wonder what’s not to like? They don’t have a strong taste — not like cabbage, turnips, or even broccoli, which is my personal non-favorite. Beets contain excellent anti-oxidants, similar to those in blueberries, pomegranites, and red wine. There are a number of ways to prepare them besides boiling or pickling. Roasting in oven is one of my favorite ways but I’ve learned not to roast them with lighter colored vegetables like potatoes, onions, and turnips, because beets turn all the vegetables red. I prefer my potatoes to retain their natural color, although roasting beets with purple Peruvian potatoes (say that 3 times fast) might be a good choice.
Here’s the rest of my garden. I’m not growing as many containers as usual because intend to move this summer but here’s what I have:
These contain melons on the left and lettuce on the right. The melons will have to be transplanted somewhere, maybe in with the poppies and peach tree after they get bigger. I start them in containers so I don’t forget to water them when they’re young and vulnerable like this. The lettuce can stay in the containers. The weather is getting a little warm for lettuce but I keep them well watered and I can move them to the shade. That’s another benefit of container gardening: mobility!
And finally here is the remainder of my garden. At the top is kohlrabi, which is excellent raw. The middle container used to house beets. I may attempt more lettuce in that one and some herbs. I just hate paying grocery store prices for herbs! They’re so easy to grow and expensive to buy if you use them frequently. The bottom container is growing a potato, which accidently planted itself some time ago. I’m not entirely sure how that happened but this container used to have carrots which went to seed and planted themselves. It is also growing sunflowers. I tried to grow sunflowers directly in the ground but the birds got the seeds even before they sprouted. If it cools down this weekend I may transplant these into a flowerbed near the pool.
Granted growing beets in a container may not be particularly economical since I can buy a bunch of beets for $1 at the farmer’s market. My beets certainly took more than $1 worth of water to grow, but they’re my beets and they’ll have that very fresh, just harvested taste.
I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. Many people don’t realize how many plants and vegetables can be grown quite successfully in containers, and many seed and plant catalogs are actually offering varieties designed to thrive specifically in containers.