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| Poles holding a basket |
Unsurprisingly, the biggest challenge to the frustrated gardener when regarding their tiny urban garden with critical eyes is a lack of space. I’ve covered my fences and walls with wall planters, vertical garden planting bags and hung hanging baskets from every single supporting fence post and still I don’t think I have enough space. So what to do? Every inch in my raised beds is filled with plants fiercely competing for what is probably too little space already and I don’t want to take over our patio or grass patch because I want our toddler to have space to play outside. So they only thing I can do is to wait for someone to invent hovercraft pots that will suspend themselves mid-air. Or, I could be wandering around the garden centre one day and suddenly realise that heavy duty tree supports might just be the answer.
I planted some hanging baskets up with basil and tumbling tomatoes and hung them from the little hooks on the poles and shoved the poles down into the raised beds in the tiny gaps between plant surrounds.
“Success!” I thought. Oh, how overconfidence comes before a fallen basket. The puny hooks on the posts were too feeble to hold the weight of a basket of soil in the rain so my mark two version consisted of strapping the hooks back against the poles with heavy duty electrical tape. The poles are leaning slightly but they’re still up and the baskets are growing in mid air, taking advantage of growing space that I don’t strictly have. Necessity is the mother of invention! (And lust for fresh produce will drive you further than you can imagine).
London to Land Girl 