You can create a no-dig garden by building up layers of organic material till you have a pile that is high and wide enough to grow some vegetables.

You can build your raised no-dig garden beds within a frame that will keep the soil in place.

You can make the frame out of solid pieces of wood, old wooden railway sleepers, kitset beds or sheets of corrugated iron.  You can use anything that will be strong enough to stand up to being filled with soil and plants.

Or you can simply build up layers of organic material on any surface and sweep or rake the soil back into place when it starts to spread.

Or you can fill old car tyres, buckets or plant troughs with organic material to create a number of mini no-dig gardens.

The best organic material to start a no-dig garden is

• straw or pea straw,

• compost (bought or home-made),

• some animal manure (sheep pellets, chicken manure or other animal manure that is readily available)

• lots of wet newspapers, flattened cardboard cartons or an old piece of wool carpet.

Before you put your raised bed in place, cover the ground with some sort of covering that will stop weeds getting through into your garden.  A piece of old carpet is great. Or flattened cardboard cartons, a very thick layer of newspapers or you can buy commercial weed mat from hardware stores of garden centres.

This base layer is especially important if you are creating your no-dig garden over an existing lawn or a ‘wilderness’ area in your back yard.

If you are using buckets or plant pots you will need to create a bottom layer that lets the water drain through – such as, stones, large pebbles or pieces from old broken clay pots

Once you have your bottom layer sorted you build up layers of the various organic material until you have filled your container, frame or have enough height in your pile of organic material.

Leave it to settle for a week before you start planting.

Lettuces getting started in an old car tyre

And what of the days of eating sweet juicy tomatoes, fresh peas in the pod, crunching on freshly picked lettuces or raiding the strawberry plants for those luscious sweet red strawberries.

How we treasure those memories and wish we could recreate them on the balconies of our apartments or the patios of our townhouses.

You can grow your own your own lettuces, tomatoes, strawberries and other edibles on balconies or patios.  They will then be very handy to the kitchen when they are ready for you to pick and eat.

Askmumnow has lots of  hints and tips  to help you with your own small garden.

You will need them to be in a sunny place so the fruit will get the warmth of the sun.

Strawberry plants generally produce two main crops each season.

If you prepare your strawberry pots in early spring, you can look forward to your first sweet juicy strawberries two months later (by Christmas in New Zealand and Australia) and another crop in autumn.

If you plant your strawberries later in spring or early summer, you will still get a crop of strawberries in autumn.

You will need:

• 1 20-30 cm planter pot or a similar sized hanging basket
• 1 bag of potting mix (available from supermarkets, hardware stores or garden centres preferably with some organic fertiliser incorporated in the mix
• A punnet or bundle of strawberry plants
• Shredded newspaper or a small amount of straw
• Old net curtains or other netting to keep the birds from eating your berries.

Fill the container with potting mix (available from supermarkets, hardware stores or garden centres).

Take your strawberry plants and set them out in the pot or basket 8-10 cm apart.

In the hanging basket you can poke some plants in the sides and some in the top.  The plants will cover the whole basket as they grow and can look spectacular.

It’s important not to bury the crown of the strawberry plant. Keep the crown (that’s the part just below the leaves), just above ground level,

Cover the potting mix in the pot or basket with straw or shredded newspaper.  This acts as mulch and also keeps the fruit off the soil so they are less likely to get dirty or rot.

Cover the plants with netting just before the fruit starts to ripen to keep the birds away.

Explanation: Mulch is a thick layer of organic material to cover garden beds to retain moisture and keep weeds away.

There are many varieties of tomatoes to choose from and it is best to ask at your local garden centre for the most suitable varieties for your situation.

You will need:

A suitable sized pot say 20-30cm (about the size of a household bucket)
Potting mix (available from supermarkets, hardware stores or garden centres, preferably with organic fertiliser incorporated in the mix)
1 tomato plant per pot.

Fill your pot with potting mix and set your tomatoes in their pots in warm, sunny, sheltered spots from mid-spring in temperate climates (like New Zealand).  They can go outside from late spring most years in New Zealand.

If you buy potting mix that already has fertilizer mixed in, you probably won’t need to add more fertilizer during the growing season.

Tomato plants will need to be staked as they grow quite tall.  You will need three bamboo or other sturdy sticks per pot.

Place the bottom ends at equal distances around the pot pushing the stake as far down as you can.  Tie the tops together in wigwam style.

The little cherry tomatoes are very satisfying to grow as they crop well and are lovely to pick and eat as you wander past.

If you don’t want to stake your tomatoes, you can often buy dwarf plants from your garden centre.

You will need:

• A suitable sized pot say 20-30cm, or a trough 15 cm wide and from 40 cm long
• Potting mix (available from supermarkets, hardware stores or garden centres)
• A punnet of 6 lettuce plants (Some places sell a punnet of mixed plants so you get some green and some red – some with smooth leaves and some with curly leaves).

Fill the container with potting mix.

Set each plant about 8cm apart in your container.

Water the plants well after planting, then continue keep the soil damp but not soggy, and watch your lettuces grow.

If you want to grow your lettuces from seed, sprinkle some of the seeds from the packet on top of fine potting mix. When they are about 2cm high, transplant some so that the remaining plants are about 8cm apart.

You can grow lettuces all the year round in parts of New Zealand as long as you have a warm sheltered spot (or even inside) in the cooler months.  Check out the local situation where you live.