[scott40k]

Well I have to say I'm a little perturbed by container succes rate this year..... So much so I've started work on a raised bed ready for next year. I am determined not to give up yet!

Having just moved to a new rented house last autumn, we decided to try container veg before making radical alterations to the garden. We used potato bags, deep reusable grow bags and deep plastic troughs and pots.

My tearaway success was my courgette. We put two to a growbag, but only one plant was really successful. Would have been even better were it  not for the awful, cold august.

Also succesful was my leaf beat spinach and chard. In fact they are still going strong under cloches and have even picked up since. Rocket was also good, but i forgot to make successional sowings 

Potatoes - maris piper and desiree in bags. Tried five to a bag with six bags plus a deep pot. Yield was on the scabby side and I feel dissapointed with the volume. We harvested one bag a week so the pots only lasted us just over six weeks. Considered with the amount spent on compost to earth them up, it seems a false economy 

Tomatoes- I'm not going to bother again  second year of trying, but another failure. They started off really well, but the slugs got to them and then parts started to die back and rot off.

Peppers- three great plants and loads of fruit despite the attempts of slugs and caterpillars, but it just didn't get warm enough for the fruit to ripen before the awful august weather. Will try again next year, but with a grow house to give them a boost.

Peas - dissapointing, pitiful yield despite looking promising. Will try again next year with a bigger quantity.

So, all in all not good  but I'm going to persevere and have decided to bite the bullet and make a raised bed roughly 8 x4 ft. Visited loads of national trust properties on holiday and they're just full of intercropped raised beds all doing a treat, so I've decided to give it a go.

In theory I should have a better success rate due to better moisture retention and forcing out of weeds due to intercropping. Hoping one bed will be easier to defend against slugs and snails  . Also intercropping is supposed to boost different plants.... I want to try carrots and leeks which I just don't think will work in pots, also onions and cabbage.

Have started the ground work and have put all this years compost in  the bottom with lots of vegetation etc to rot down and will purchase new compost to go on top and then dig it all in.

Anything else I should think about? Words of wisdom? Thoughts on what went wrong this year?

[JayG]

This year was very challenging, with late frosts, periods of weather which were either too dry and prolonged, or too overcast/wet and prolonged (and at the wrong times as well!)

My results were fairly average; I suspect some people would describe yours as quite good by comparison with theirs!

Container growing is always going to be more challenging than plot growing if only because of the watering requirements; tomatoes and chillies will struggle outdoors in a poor summer especially if the former succumb to blight.

Think very carefully about how to maximise your limited space; you may be able to follow some first early potatoes with some pre-grown young leeks, for example, but I would think that cabbages take up far too much space for too long to be a sensible choice.

Make safe choices if you want to avoid disappointment, but don't get too negative about it; next summer will be brilliant! 

[scott40k]

We can but hope for a better summer in 2011  I kind of realise this years weather is as much to blame as my inexperience. It's nice of you to say I've done well, but in general I feel disappointed. Maybe I just had too high expectations 

I looked at catch cropping I think it's called, but it could turn out to be a planning nightmare! Maybe worth reconsidering again if I can get leeks past the size of a blade of grass!

That's the thing though, I want my space to be productive and worthwhile without costing a fortune, or am I just chasing the impossible?

[JayG]

I grow fruit and veg as much for the pleasure and satisfaction of working with the soil and the seasons as for the value or quantity of what I get out if it. That's not to say I feel the same way about failures as successes though, and I'm far too tight to grow anything which will cost me more to grow than I can buy it for in the shops!

Don't confuse catch-cropping with successional sowing or follow-on crops (although they can overlap!)

A catch-crop is a quick-maturing crop like salad leaves or radish sown between larger crops which can be grown and harvested before the larger crops need the space themselves.

Successional sowing is used to ensure a continuous supply of usually fairly quick growing vegetables which would otherwise all mature at once and be wasted.

Leeks are a popular follow-on crop after early potatoes if you get the timing right!

All useful techniques to maximise productivity from limited space; whether you consider it "worthwhile" or not will still be your call! 

[mumofstig]

IMO potatoes are not 'worth' growing in pots when you buy the multipurpose to grow them in, as you suggest.
If you are going to buy stuff to raise the level in your beds can I suggest you buy bags of top soil rather than just adding bags of multi purpose compost. Multi purp seems to slump and dry away to nothing very quickly, as the materials that it is made with rot away. Soil will keep most of it's level after the initial settlement.

The other thing I would ask was whether you fed your crops during the year at all? as bought in compost only has enough fertiliser for the first 4-6 weeks, so plenty of additional feeding is required for hungry crops.

Good luck for next year!

[Fisherman]

If your making a raised bed I would also invest in materials to make a cloche that will cover all or part of your bed. Germination rates are a lot higher under a cloche especially if the weather goes cold and wet just after sowing certain types of seed. All you need is some alkathene water pipe to make hoops and some plastic sheeting for the covering. The cloche can also be used to germinate seeds sown in pots before growing them on and then planting them out.

[solway cropper]

I grow a wide range of veg in assorted containers with considerable success but, as others have pointed out, it does require more work. I make my own compost which means I can tailor it to suit the crop (it's also much cheaper). I also feed all my stuff with home-made seaweed feed throughout the season. It is easily possible to get 2 crops per container and even 3 if you are careful and have a rich growing medium. With shop-bought compost I wouldn't attempt more than one crop.

I think I might have posted this somewhere before but the pic shows celery growing in an old wheelbarrow which had earlier given me a crop of epicure potatoes. The celery was cut in late August and left to throw up new shoots which were then used in salads. If I'd removed the plants I could have grown a fast crop like lettuce.

All of which means that the trick with container growing is to ensure an adequate supply of food and water. Get this right and you can grow anything.

[bigben]

IMO potatoes are not 'worth' growing in pots when you buy the multipurpose to grow them in, as you suggest.

I noticed this the first year I grew them, so now I have one of my compost bins set aside just to use to grow spuds in pots. At the start of the season I buy a couple of bags of horse manure at a £1 a bag from our local stables and mix it with the contents of my compost bin and a few bags of multi purpose compost bought at 3 for a tenner. My compost bin holds about 360 litres so with the other stuff I can have 15-18 x 40litre pots filled for about 75p each.

Even at this price, once you add the price of the seed spuds it can still be cheaper to just buy the spuds direct but they dont taste as good and I then use my pots to grow salads, kale and carrots before emptying them onto my raised beds.