Making a yard into a garden!

If you cut gro-bags in half across the middle (width-ways not length-ways) so you have two deep polythene pots, then you can grow courgettes which have loads of big leaves and look really green. Tomatoes work well in these too.

For colour and cheerfulness, how about little terracotta pots with geraniums (pelargoniums?). You could replace them with primroses or pansies in the winter. Or those big white daisies with the silvery leaves that come in pots - sorry, I can't remember what they are called. Some fushias grow well in pots too are and so pretty.

Possibly climbing plants? I grew a honeysuckle in a big pot once and it climbed up the wall nicely, and I now have a white jasmine that is growing up my car port and smells gorgeous.

You could also grow blueberry bushes in pots and i'm wanting a couple of miniature fruit trees (I keep dropping hints to DH but he hasn't yet picked them up).

Bamboo are lovely and elegant looking and are apparently best grown in pots (I understand they can be quite invasive), although they are expensive. Lavender would be nice too as it would attract the insects and butterflies and smells gorgeous.

Hello!

What an exciting project! I found this thread really inspirational and it is well worth having a look at for ideas.

I love growing my own fruit and veg - although I haven't done anything this year as I'm working away from home and last year was a painful introduction to the fact that DH and DD can't be trusted to water and care for anything other than themselves

Things that went well:
Potatoes were fun but are cheap to buy from the shop and do take up loads of space. I grew them in large pots one year and then in potato bags but there wasn't much difference in yield or ease.
Tomatoes are one of my favourite fruit/veg but if it's a wet spring and summer watch out for the blight. They can also be grown in hanging baskets (as can strawberries) if you are short on space
Courgettes, so easy to grown and delish.
Cucumbers, I bought the mini variety and they are gorgeous and so prolific
French beans worked well in pots and were tasty too.
Salad leaves, these were really simple but lovely and kept growing well into December
Chillis, these grew well and I got so many I sliced and froze them

Things that didn't go so well
Squash need loads of space and feeding and I got very little success trying to grow them in pots
Carrots, these never work for me. I ended up with tiny, pathetic things which weren't worth scraping the mud off
Beetroot, got some but they were a bit stunted and such a hassle to prepare
Mini cauliflower, apparently these need very firm ground to grow in and I struggled to get the soil in the pots firm enough I think. Anyway, they were rubbish
Peppers, despite the chillis doing well, these always turned out thin skinned and bitter, that's when they bothered to grow.


Have fun!

Yolina wrote: »

I'm in a flat with a terrace and have been growing all sorts in the last 14 years. Provided your containers are large enough, there's no reason why things shouldn't do well.

If it helps, I have:
Winter jasmine, hellebores, solanum, sarcococca, euonymus, spirea, coprosma, clematis, mint, sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley, courgettes and tomatoes. Plus a whole bunch of bulbs, a few annuals and other small plants. But really most plants will be fine in containers so it's just a case of picking what you like.

at least 3 off that list are either poisonous or skin irritants and I think a couple more are as well, if the OP wants to teach her little one about growing and eating things in a 'small back yard' it might be as well to have safer plants to start off with.

OP - there's some general advice about child safe gardens from the RHS here: http://www.rhs.org.uk/Children/For-families/Safety-tips

I since got a small garden but still have half moon pots on walls and 4 hanging baskets. Did them at weekend