Tips For Growing Food In Your Conservatory!

If you don’t have a huge amount of garden space and want to make the most of your conservatory, then why not try growing some food? We’re here with some tips on how to get started! From the setup through to the plants, when to plant and how to regulate the temperature, we’ve got you covered. There’s nothing quite like growing and eating your own fruit, veg and herbs, so start your setup and you’ll soon be able to benefit from it!

Choose The Right Setup

The first thing to do is choose the right setup for your conservatory! There are so many different options, however we quite like something that is self contained, so we’d recommend getting a table to keep everything in one place. You could just have pots with the plants, or you could get a mini greenhouse kind of setup if you wanted to as well, although not essential as it’s indoors anyway.

Identify The Right Plants!

A conservatory has the potential for great growing conditions for a wide range of different fruit and veg! This will depend on how much space you have, however you could grow anything from peaches and figs to potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, spinach, carrots, and all sorts of different herbs. If you’re wanting to start small, then tomatoes are a great one, as they don’t require much soil and grow nice and quickly. This is also good if your conservatory is used for other purposes as well like a sitting room.

If your conservatory will solely be for growing fruit and veg, then you’ll have more space to work with so you could try all sorts of things. Fruit is an ideal thing to grow, as they tend to ripen quicker, so are more protected from birds and pests as they can be picked quicker. If you have room for small trees, then plums, pears and cherry trees are ideal and can grow fruit year after year, getting more established the longer you have them.

Plant At The Right Time

Something else you need to get right is to ensure you’re planting at the right time of year. This will depend on the type of food you’re growing, although for the most part, it’ll be planting in March. Conservatories do fluctuate in temperature (which we’ll get onto), so March usually provides more stability. You could also get some plants you can just keep all year and grow back every year, like fruit trees, which are great for preserving your food through the rest of the year!

Try To Regulate Temperature

One quite big consideration when it comes to whether or not you can grow food in your conservatory is whether you can regulate the temperature. This is usually an issue in the summer predominantly, as they get absolutely boiling without the right light control and conservatory insulation. This can be quite well suited to some foods, like tomatoes, however others might suffer when it’s too hot. So, you could consider something like a tile roof for conservatory or conservatory insulation to help reduce the temperature in the summer but also keep it warmer in the winter, so it’s a win-win and just provides a more consistent temperature throughout the year.

Control Light

Something else you need to consider along a similar line is how you’ll control the light. Plants need light, that’s a given, however light is intensified through a conservatory, and so if you have a glass roof, it can make the light too intense. Getting a tiled roof will help with this, or you could also look at getting window coverings where the light can easily be controlled, like good quality conservatory roof blinds and window blinds. Regulating the light to provide more consistency can really help with the quality of the food you’re growing.

Check For Pests

Whilst growing your food inside does help to reduce pests, it doesn’t eradicate the risk completely. So, you should regularly be checking for pests, particularly aphids including blackfly, greenfly and whitefly. The most natural way to prevent these is to choose companion plants that help to deter them, for example pungent plants like sage, then you can also benefit from delicious herbs! You can also get more natural bug control sprays if you’re really suffering with the issue.