We are now into April so it’s time to stop worrying about cold nights and ground frost as we pass “Last Frost Day”.  Things are looking a lot greener on the balcony already.

To celebrate, I tranplanted out some of the lettuce and broccoli seedlings and direct-sowed the dwarf borlotti beans and the climbing beans. The main issue I faced was to figure out what the requirements of the plants were and how I could best accomodate them in the containers we had.

Researching root lengths and plant spacings on the Internet, you often get ideal estimates derived from planting in the ground. As I’m obviously restricted spacewise, I tried to order the plants in terms of their requirements and then accomodate as best I could in an attempt to find the balance between space per plant and number of plants.

Plant Roots Spacing Decision:

Beans: 30cm deep troughs, climbing beans with trellis

Kale: 15cm deep window box

Lettuce: 40cm deep container (plus some in a 15cm deep window box as an experiment)

Sprouting Broccoli: 40cm deep containers (one plant sharing with the lettuce, another sharing with carrots)

Due to the lack of general information on growing green sprouting broccoli in containers, I am beginning to instinctively feel that this may be a bad idea. We have purple sprouting broccoli seeds also, but I’m going to plant them in late summer after the potatoes come up. The deep potato trough should suit these plants better. It will be good to make use of the space over winter and hopefully we’ll be able to harvest them next Spring.

Perhaps the most significant benefit I have reaped from this episode is the ability to spell “broccoli”. Let’s hope I remember!