If you are lucky enough to have a medium-sized urban garden, then with ingenuity, double-cropping and lots of hard work, you can produce a surprising amount of fruit, vegetables, herbs and even some pretty flowers on a year-round basis using — as always — sustainable organic growing methods.

First and foremost, you need to study the lie of the land in order to make full use of every single square inch of it in a way that keeps regular maintenance to a minimum and ensures ease of access throughout the garden.

Just about the best way of doing this is to make a series of garden beds. These can be as long as you like but should not be more than three feet wide if located against, for example, a boundary wall and five to six feet if they have footpaths on all four sides. These specific widths allow the gardener to reach all parts of the bed for planting, weeding, harvesting, etc, without having to set a single foot on the soil surface. Standing on soil compacts it, adversely affecting soil texture and the hardworking insects and microbes that help keep it fertile and the plants healthy.

With double cropping, you can have lots of fruit, vegetables and flowers all year round

If at all possible, the beds, along with any rows of plants therein, should be orientated north to south so that plants get the benefit of equal amounts of sunshine on both sides. This encourages balanced growth. Of course, when neighbouring buildings are in the way, you must do the best you can with whatever amount of sunshine is available. Keep in mind that leafy plants, such as lettuce, spinach, cabbage and many herbs, will tolerate more shade than fruiting or root crops — tomatoes, aubergines, pumpkins, courgettes being examples of fruiting ones and beetroot, carrots, potatoes and turnips being root crops. A highly productive garden requires at least six to eight hours of direct sunshine each day.

Also, try to have three beds of equal size so that the root crop bed can be moved to what was the ‘Brassica’ bed and the ‘Brassicas’ to the bed where tomatoes, aubergines, etc., were previously grown. This is generally known as the three-year crop rotation system and helps prevent the build-up of pests and diseases in the soil. It also allows for renewal of essential nutrients and trace elements before a particular crop has a chance to totally deplete them. Growing one type of crop in the same bed year after year is asking for trouble. A three-year or even a five-year crop rotation is an eminently sensible way of maintaining sustainable growing conditions for all your plants, providing that each crop is regularly fed — using old, well-rotted manure, home-made organic compost or compost tea — and mulched to specific crops’ requirements.

Beds of mixed species also work well if the species planted together have similar soil, food and water needs, and if you are utilising companion planting methods to keep all of your plants healthy and happy in a sustainable, natural way.

Garden beds that are five to six feet wide can, for instance, have some kind of trellis or wigwam construction running down their centre. These are ideal for growing climbing peas and beans, or climbing cucumbers or other climbing members of the ‘Cucurbita’ family such as lauki. Even pumpkins and melons can be trained to climb, although their potentially heavy fruits must be supported in firmly fixed nets to prevent them from coming crashing down.

If concentrating more on perennial edibles than on seasonal ones, such a central trellis, if purposefully scaled and securely fixed, can be perfect for meticulously trained grape vines, passion fruit vines, kiwi fruit and the like.

For a garden to be in full production — and to protect soil from the blistering sun, heavy rain or strong winds — there should, irrespective of the time of year, be no bare soil at all. As one crop finishes, another should be going in. If not, then there should be a green manure crop — one which is dug into the soil, before it flowers and seeds — to feed it and the diverse life forms it contains. Lucerne, clover, mustard, fenugreek (mate), phacelia tanacetifolia are all first-class green manure crops as is common flax (alsi) whose seed is easily and cheaply found in the bazaars.

As with the small urban garden, discussed last month, compost bins (at least three or four and a bin or two for brewing compost tea) are highly recommended essentials. If underground and overhead pipes/cables permit, a selection of small to medium-sized fruit trees/bushes is a must with falsa, cheeku, sharifa, lemons, papaya, banana and guava being high on the list of possible options.

Plan well, work hard and the results can be absolutely amazing.

Please continue sending your gardening queries to zahrahnasir@hotmail.com. Remember to include your location. The writer does not respond directly by email. Emails with attachments will not be opened. Commercial enquiries will be ignored.

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 16th, 2019