We got a tiny garden- even by British standards but I try to squeeze in everything we need: a play area for the kids and the dog, flowers and a vegetable garden. I was a bit reluctant at first, since there was a septic tank at the bottom of the garden for a good 30 years and I was afraid that the soil might be contaminated so for the first few years we were living here I only grew flowers and herbs.
One day browsing the net I came across a brilliant way of container gardening called an “earthbox” and found a great tutorial on how to build your own and James kindly built a couple for us.
I was very excited about starting to produce our own food and got a lot of potting soil- but made the first mistake of buying “general flower potting soil” (általános virágföld in magyar) which is really not suitable for growing vegetables and can be toxic as I learnt later from Áron the organic farmer. I also bought far too many plants at the market- got carried away- and planted cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers and courgettes. I covered the top with the black plastic bag of the potting compost and filled up the containers with water- and checked the plants every day!
And gosh they grew! The peppers were doing really well even though they were a bit crammed, one cucumber went mental and grew all over the lawn and the tomatoes looked very promising too.
The courgette/ zuccini plants looked great and had a couple of baby fruits, then started rotting one day, still don’t know why- and it happened this year too.
The cucumber produced plenty of delicious fruit and we found it extremely exciting and satisfying to pick a fresh cucumber when were making sandwiches. The tomatoes soon had bright red fruit which caught the attention of our naughty dog, and he kept picking the tomatoes- and destroying the plants with his gentle 35 kg body. Why on earth did we raise him vegetarian? So not many tomatoes for us. James built an impressive fence around the plants but soon Oli demolished that too and gulped down the rest. Ah well, at least the peppers did well.
A year later when we were back in England I was flipping through a gardening catalogue and the “upside down tomatoes” caught my eyes. I was a bit sceptical but willing to try; if it worked we’d have tomatoes growing out of the dog’s range! If you google it you will find plenty of video tutorials on how to make your own. I just got a couple of builder’s buckets, James drilled a hole in the bottom and voila. 
I put in the tomato plant and planted flowers on the top. To be honest the flowers did a lot better than the tomatoes, the did produce some fruit but none of them did great. I experimented with strawberries and cucumbers this year and the strawberry did ok, the cucumber did really well, till we forgot to water it once- which ruined the plant. The moral of the story is that cucumbers should go in Earthboxes, they need so much water (and they are safe from the dog). For more images click the photos or the flickr button in the side bar. 
Next time I'll write about container gardening and pergolas.
Are you also growing vegetables at home?
