Growing your own Dwarf Vegetable Varieties

Cultivating home grown vegetables is a simple pleasure that anyone can experience, even if you have limited space. We don’t all have the benefit of a large garden with room for a greenhouse and a range of vegetable plots but a simple allotment can be easily created on a balcony or in a tiny backyard.

With a small raised bed and a careful choice of plants you can create a manageable vegetable plot with very little effort or expense. Most compact gardeners tend to choose salads because of their size but can easily supplement these with the dwarf varieties of their favourite vegetables. Dwarf vegetables are just as tasty and certainly as healthy as their larger counterparts, growing to full maturity at a fraction of the size making them perfect for container, planter and raised bed gardening.

Here is a selection of these incredible space saving crops:

Broccoli Kabuki.
Specially bred for close spacing, the Kabuki Dwarf will produce a central head, perfect for cutting as a single meal. After the first cutting smaller side shoots will develop for a second crop. This tasty brassica is ready to eat just 8 weeks from planting.

Tom Thumb Pea.
This tasty, delicate pea plant is perfect for container gardening and may even be grown on a window sill in a small pot. Any small child would take great delight in cultivating these delicious sweet pods in a home gardening project.

Dwarf Green Curled Kale.
This highly nutritious winter green will take advantage of any tight space you have in the garden, providing a feast of tasty greens in any weather.

Cauliflower Igloo.
These crisp, white headed cauliflowers can be sown close together for small, perfect heads or further apart for a more conventional sized crown. They will benefit from successive sowings throughout the growing season.

Dwarf French Beans.
These plants are not climbers and are best grown in clumps to provide the little support they do require. They are just as tasty as their climbing counterparts and with good weather and regular picking will provide a long harvesting season.

Miniature vegetables are grown in the same way as any other variety, often with the advantage of a shorter growing period giving the opportunity for repeat sowings. Pay attention to the spacing when planting and be prepared for the early harvest. Dwarf vegetables have the same soil, water, nutrient, and light requirements as ordinary varieties and will demonstrate to the urban gardener, or anybody with limited space, just how easy it can be to grow your own.