Grow vegetables at counter height and leave your knees out of it

Quick answer: Raise the soil to about the height of your kitchen counter, use fewer and bigger pots, and solve watering before you buy a single plant. Do those three and a patio garden is a pleasure, not a chore your knees pay for.

The best tool for gardening with bad knees isn't a foam kneeler or a little rolling seat. It's a planter that brings the soil up to meet you, somewhere between 30 and 36 inches off the ground. At that height you pick tomatoes standing up, the same way you'd chop an onion. Nobody ever needed a knee pad to chop an onion.

Most patio gardens fail in August, not May. The pots were too small, they sat on the ground, and watering them turned into a twice-daily trip with a sloshing can. You can skip all of that if you set it up right the first time.

Height first, then everything else

You've got three good ways to get the soil up where you can reach it.

• An elevated planter on legs. It's basically a long wooden or metal trough at waist height. You can stand at it or pull a chair up to it. It's the closest thing to a garden that won't hurt.
• A big pot on a sturdy stand. This works well for one or two tomato plants. Make sure the stand is rated for the weight and that its legs are wide.
• A plant caddy with locking wheels. It doesn't add much height, but you'll never have to lift the pot again. You can roll it into the sun, out of a storm, or into the garage in October.

Elevated planters have a real drawback. Most are only 8 to 12 inches deep, so they dry out faster and they suit lettuce, herbs and peppers better than big tomatoes. Tall pots on stands get top-heavy once a tomato plant is loaded with fruit, and a summer thunderstorm can tip one over. Put those against a wall or a railing, out of the worst wind.

If your knees have already set the rules for you, what actually keeps knees and hips going past seventy is worth a read before you start moving heavy things around.

Fewer pots, bigger pots

A row of cheerful little pots is the most common mistake on any patio. Small pots heat up in the sun and dry out fast. In July they can be bone dry by mid-afternoon, and the plants spend the summer stressed.

As a rough guide:

• Tomatoes: 10 gallons or more. Five gallons will work for a compact variety if you're faithful with the water.
• Peppers and eggplant: 5 gallons each.
• Lettuce, spinach, chard: shallow is fine, 6 to 8 inches of soil, but go wide.
• Herbs: basil, parsley and chives share a pot happily. Mint goes in its own pot, always, or it takes over.

Now for the part the garden center won't tell you. A gallon of water weighs a little over eight pounds, and a big pot of wet potting mix weighs far more than you should ever try to lift. So set the pot exactly where it'll live, put the caddy under it if you're using one, and then fill it. Fill it once and leave it there.

The same goes for the 40-pound bags of potting mix. Ask the store to load them into your car, buy the smaller bags even though they cost more per pound, or have it delivered. Spending a few extra dollars is a lot cheaper than hurting your back.

What to grow, and what to skip

Grow what you'll actually eat and what gives you a lot from one pot.

Worth the space:

• Patio or bush tomatoes such as 'Patio Princess' or 'Bush Early Girl'. They stay compact and don't need a ladder-tall cage.
• Cherry tomatoes. A single plant of 'Sungold' will keep you supplied most of the summer.
• Peppers. Jalapeños and small sweet peppers are very productive in a 5-gallon pot.
• Lettuce like 'Black Seeded Simpson'. Cut the outer leaves and it keeps growing back.
• Swiss chard such as 'Bright Lights'. It's hard to kill, it's pretty, and it produces until frost.
• Bush beans like 'Provider'. They need no trellis and you can pick them without bending.
• Compact cucumbers such as 'Spacemaster', trained up a small trellis so the fruit hangs at hand height.
• Herbs. Basil, parsley, thyme and chives are the cheapest flavor you'll ever grow.

Skip these on a patio:

• Corn. It needs a crowd of plants to pollinate.
• Full-size pumpkins and watermelons. The vines will cover the patio, the grill and probably your neighbor.
• Potatoes. They grow fine in bags, but harvesting them means tipping the bag out and sorting through it at ground level. Your knees will vote no.
• Giant beefsteak tomatoes on 7-foot stakes. They're glorious, but you'd be tying them up from a stepstool.

Start with transplants from a nursery, not seed. You'll lose a little of the fun and gain about six weeks of harvest.

Water is the real job

Planting takes an afternoon. Watering takes all summer. Containers in full sun can need a drink every day in the heat, sometimes twice, so plan for it now.

Self-watering containers have a reservoir under the soil that you fill through a tube. The plant draws water up as it needs it. In hot weather that can turn a daily chore into one every few days. They cost more than a plain pot. They're worth it for tomatoes.

A drip kit on a hose timer is the other good answer. Thin tubes run to each pot, the timer turns the water on at six in the morning, and you never carry anything. It takes an hour to set up. Have a grandchild or a handy neighbor help with the fittings if fiddly plastic parts aren't your idea of fun.

If you're hand-watering, use a long hose wand so you can reach the base of each plant standing up. Retire the watering can. It's the heaviest thing in your garden and you lift it more often than anything else.

To check if a pot needs water, push a finger an inch into the soil. If it's dry, water slowly until it drains out the bottom.

Soil, sun and timing

Use potting mix, not garden soil. Dirt from the yard packs down hard in a pot and suffocates the roots. Mix in a slow-release vegetable fertilizer when you plant and you won't have to think about feeding for weeks. Each spring, scoop out the top few inches and top it up with fresh mix rather than emptying the whole thing.

Most vegetables want six or more hours of direct sun. Watch your patio for a day before you buy anything. Plenty of people find out the hard way that the sunny corner is in shade by two o'clock. If you get less sun than that, stick to lettuce, chard and herbs, which put up with partial shade.

For planting dates, call your county's Cooperative Extension office. It's free, it's run through your state's land-grant university, and they'll tell you your area's last frost date and which varieties do well near you. Plant tomatoes and peppers after that date, once the nights have warmed up.

Work in the morning, wear a wide-brimmed hat, and keep a chair right by the planter. Sitting down while you pinch back the basil isn't giving in. It's just good sense.

The pot that belongs to someone else

If grandchildren come by, give one of them a pot of their own. A cherry tomato on a low caddy, at their height, labeled with their name in marker. Children who won't touch a salad will eat tomatoes warm off a plant they've watered themselves. A grandfather in Ohio and a widow in Arizona will tell you the same thing about this. The pot becomes the reason they ask to come over.

And if you've recently moved somewhere smaller (downsizing gets its own piece), a patio garden turns a slab of concrete into the place you go every morning with your coffee. You walk out, look at what grew overnight, and pick what's ripe.

Then go back inside and make lunch with it.