The season has begun and perhaps you can already see what’s growing in your raised bed, in your containers on the balcony or on your windowsills. Regardless how big or small your garden is, there are a lot of ways to ensure a bountiful harvest. Eva Robild, author of Odla i pallkrage and Maxad skörd i din pallkrage (both in Swedish), shares her best tips here.
- Find a great place for your raised bed. Preferably somewhere sunny and sheltered from the wind, with at least seven to eight hours sunshine a day.
- Place two wooden pallet collars on top of each other to give you a 40 cm raised bed. You will need a lot of soil if you’re going to grow edible plants. The bigger the container, the less you will have to water it.
- Compost all of your dead plants and old organic material directly in your raised bed. What can you find around you? Old leaves, clippings or similar? Use them to line the bottom of your raised bed. It adds bulk and will decompose into excellent mulch. Then fill the rest of the space with 50% soil and 50% manure.
- Divide your raised bed into six sections. Then grow six of your favourite vegetables in each of the sections. When it’s time to harvest your vegetables from one of the sections, you can sow something else there straight after. Sometimes you can get several harvests our of the same space, such as Kale, for example. If you grow lettuce between your kale plants, they usually sprout up and can be harvested before your kale starts filling up the entire space.
- Don’t forget to water and fertilize your little garden. If you’re planning to go away for more than seven days, ask a neighbour to give your plants a quick water. Add fertlizer about once a month, preferably with chicken manure.
