Self-sufficient garden – harvest and enjoy all year round

Growing and harvesting fruit and vegetables brings great joy and is also incredibly sustainable. By managing your kitchen garden organically and in harmony with nature, you can avoid synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, not only protecting the environment and your health but also supporting biodiversity.

You don’t need a large garden to be self-sufficient. With good planning, you can grow fresh produce all year round, even in pots and containers on your balcony or terrace.

To achieve self-sufficiency with fruit and vegetables, an estimated 85 square metres is required. Fruit trees and potatoes take up a significant amount of space. If you also want to keep chickens, the space requirement increases considerably, as you’ll need an enclosure and a chicken coop.

For a slightly smaller start, 40 square metres of garden space is enough to supply two people with vegetables (excluding potatoes) from May onwards. You can harvest 2 to 3 kg of vegetables per square metre over the course of the year with just 2 square metres. Clever container planting on a balcony or terrace, including vertical growing, can yield a surprisingly plentiful harvest.

• How much space do I have to grow vegetables and fruit?
  For larger areas, you can include fruit trees like apple and cherry. However, a standard apple tree requires 8–12 metres of planting distance from the next tree, while a semi-dwarf tree, which grows to about 4–5 metres tall, needs 6–8 metres of space. Alternatives for smaller gardens include spindle bushes, shrubs, or perennials like strawberries or physalis. Space-saving options include climbing fruits, such as kiwi, climbing vegetables, like runner beans, climbing courgettes, and cucumbers. On balconies and terraces, plants that grow vertically make the best use of the available space.
• How much time do I have for gardening and processing the harvest?
  The garden should always be enjoyable and a way to balance work and leisure, so don’t take on too much at once. With a large harvest, you’ll need to consider storage methods. Freezing, drying, preserving and all of this requires your time.
• What are the local site conditions like?
  A southeast location is ideal for a vegetable garden, especially if you want to grow sun-loving plants like peppers, aubergines, and courgettes, which thrive in sunny locations. However, even with a northeast or northwest location, you can still achieve good harvests. The soil warms up a bit later in spring, but in summer, the beds are not exposed to intense sunlight, keeping the soil moist. The location and light conditions play a significant role in determining which vegetables to grow. Here, you’ll find tips on fruit and vegetable varieties suitable for shaded areas.
• What needs to be grown?
  Tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, strawberries, raspberries, the options are endless, but the focus should initially be on your favourites. If tomatoes are one of your top choices, you’ll need a tomato house for this delicate crop.

With a planting plan, you can decide each year which plants will grow in which beds. By keeping track of sowing, planting, and harvesting times, you can enjoy fresh vegetables almost all year round.

You should opt for mixed cropping to make the best use of your garden. When vegetables with varying root depths grow together in the same bed, nutrients from all the soil layers are utilised, preventing the deeper ones from being washed into the groundwater. Tomatoes and radishes pair well, as they root at different depths and make great companions. The same applies to strawberries and parsley, peas, and kohlrabi, among other combinations. However, leeks and beetroot can inhibit each other’s growth.

Each type of plant draws different nutrients from the soil, and growing the same vegetable in the same spot year after year depletes the soil. To maintain soil health, start with heavy feeders (e.g. cabbages, cucumbers, potatoes, celery, courgettes, and pumpkins) in the first year, followed by medium feeders (e.g. onions, leeks, beetroot, and spinach) in the second year, and finally light feeders (e.g. beans, peas, and lamb’s lettuce) in the third year.

If the same vegetable is repeatedly grown in the same spot, diseases and pests can survive and multiply. Using crop rotation means the same vegetable won’t return to the same place for at least three years, so pests and diseases cannot find food and eventually disappear.

Thanks to their special layered structure, raised beds are ideal for your self-sufficiency project. Fruit shrubs like strawberries thrive wonderfully, as do lettuce, carrots, kohlrabi, beans, and other types of vegetables.

Vegetables and fruit require care, whether you’re gardening in the ground or pots. The most important task is to loosen the soil after rain and protect it from drying out. This is best achieved by covering it with grass clippings or other mulch materials. You can turn green waste and garden clippings into mulch using tools like the Bosch AXT Rapid 2000 shredder. Plants also need nutrients in the form of fertilisers to grow well and produce good harvests. If you have space for a compost bin, this is a very sustainable option. Kitchen and garden organic waste can then turn into nutrient-rich compost, which can be used as fertiliser. If space is limited, Bokashi composting is a great alternative.

There is no need for chemicals to strengthen your plants. Fertilisers such as horse and cow manure, horn shavings, compost, sheep wool pellets, and nettle slurry are ideal. You can also prepare special teas, broths, or liquid fertilisers from garlic, tansy, onion skins, or nettles to help ward off diseases and pests.

If you'd like to know more about when to carry out specific gardening tasks, you can find the right times to do the important activities in our garden calendar.