Hello one and all!

Welcome to the forum, Salazar! Sounds like you have your hands full..

Where will you be growing? Inside, outside, outside under cover in the ground or in pots? What sort of veg/leafs are you looking to grow?

If you could stick your (rough) location in your profile, it'll save everyone from asking your location when tailoring advice to your local climate/conditions

While I don't understand your fascination for these marvellous creatures I applaud your desire to keep them in tip top condition with the best food you can provide. As Chris says, what growing techniques are you going to employ?

Thanks Chris, I think I updated it? lol I live in Stoke On Trent. I don't have much space in my garden, well it is more like a yard but there are some of the more important things I do need to grow.

His staple foods consist of Spring greens, turnip greens, and mustard greens, escarole, endive, raddish tops and alfalfa (mature not the sprouts) and watercress, I can easily obtain the spring greens and the watercress, the rest I will have to grow. he eats many weeds too, dandilion and plantain too so weeds are not at all an issue for me, they are never there when you need them lol.

The flowers I would like to grow for him are Hibiscus, Nasturtium, Petunia, Marigold, dahlia and hen+chicken would be at least the most basic for me.

There will hopefull be other things but these are the most basic requirement for him.
If I can feed him 80 different foods a year and grow some of the more important stuff I will be very happy and I am sure he will too.

It will mostly be outside.

I done very well the first time with mustard, I just bought loads of seeds put them in trays outside, he ate it for a while and then it died! I put that down to the winter though but will be happy to try that again

Hello and a very warm welcome to the Vine. You will find loads of information on here as to how to grow your veg. The flowers, particularly nasturtium, petunia and marigold will be easily grown from seed in pots. You may need some kind of greenhouse for the winter months.

Thanks Donna, love the username by the way to be honest I am very new to having to grow stuff, so I have no idea what techniques I need to think about, I am thinking just soil, seeds and growing lol, it doesn't need to be on a massive scale, just so I can pick at bits all the time, his diet is quite specific and alot of things can make him poorly (yes there is such a thing as bad stuff veg wise for these chaps) lol. and I won't be using pesticides or anything either, many caresheets and sources of info tell you to never feed that sort of stuff to them, so everything will have to be organic

I understand reptiles are not everyones cup of tea, but I beleive if we have a "wild animal" in our care we should strive to make its life as comforting and happy as possible, in the wild an iguana can easily eat over 250 wild foods, in captivity this is difficult to do in itself, but the most basic and most important foods he needs should help me, so when I say they eat 250 wild foods, but I will be happy to feed him 80 foods per year, I think that is a good start considering many keepers cant keep up with the basics and sadly results in there iguana becommng poorly.


Thankyou for the warm welcome Florecne, woo it sounds great that I can get the help and advice I will need from here, I doubt my yard will hold a greenhouse lol but I am moving in May where we will have a bigger garden so I can grow more stuff woop.

My daughter has beardies and since starting gardening in the summer, I am growing or can grow just about everything they need in the plant department. The beardies can't eat anything cabbage related which limits the winter options a bit. The other thing is, and I don't know if the Ig will be the same, they actually don't eat very much but it has to be fresh every day. I concentrate on growing green leaves in my poly tunnel over winter but you should be able to grow everthing you need on window sills. So salad mixes sown every two weeks or so will give you a range of baby leaves look for ones that say they are for regular harvesting. These mixes are very varied with a real mixture of tatses for your boy/girl (Thompson and Morgan have some very cheap at the mo, which you could stock up on). Dig up some dandilions and put them in pots, they will grow through the winter and may even flower for you. Leaf beet can be pursuaded to germinate and grow in the house and I have just done the same with baby turnips but am not sure how they will go on from now. Chinese leaves can be done this way, as you have grown mustard, I assume spicey tastes are appreciated. My pot marigiolds were still flowering in November when I threw them out so will be a god supply of flowers. Sweet corn can be grown in your garden and then frozen to feed later. Chicory is one of my favourites because the leaves can be picked all the time the plant is growing, it stores well in the fridge and, when you finally cut the head off, it grows again.

Sheets of glass can be used to extend your season outdoors by making mini green houses or cold frames I'm a big fan of bottle cloches which are so easy to use over individual plants (pic). Controlling slugs will probably be your biggest problem out doors so it's worth thinking about biological control (nematodes) or slug traps from very early on.

A really good thing to do is to get to your library and look at all the gardening books they have. Find one that speaks to you, buy it and use it.

I hope this has been of use. Good luck.

Awesome! I used to keep bearded dragons, much of what they can eat is much same as the iguana, but on a much larger scale! Albus can easily devour 4-5 plates of greens a day, the cabbage is the same for the iguana, it is too high in goitrogens which is not good for their thyroid.

Yes it does have to be fresh every single day, on every feed, if it does not look edible to us then it is deffo not suitible for them, it wasn't so hard when I had beardies it was approx 2 years ago.

I could dig up some dandilions and pot them for over the winter, that is easy enough done good suggestion there.
I have some beet seeds, I am only growing them for the greens but again it isn't a massive issue for iggy, due to the high oxolates (which reverses the ca:P ratio) it is only something that I include into the diet once or twice a year, the same with kale.

I am hoping to grow some turnips, but again only for their greens and nothing else lol. although I am sure I could put the veg to some use.

I have chicory seeds too which I am hoping to grow soon, I just wasn't sure if anything would come of it on the window sill?


funny you mention books, I have been browsing recently lol.


thankyou very much for the reply, its nice to know you do all that for your daughter and the beardies, I wish my mum had a fondness for growing things lol it is nice knowing that someone else shares and interest.

Hello Salazar....fab name, although I am not really a HP fan, my littlest is mad on it.

Nice to meet you, and looking forward to your imput in 2012!!

We also have cats, hamsters, rats, snakes, a magpie, horses, goats and sheep.

If he'll eat beet/chard that will be your best outdoor option for winter, turnips will stand over winter with some greens on. Will he eat carrot tops because you can get them to sprout indoors (from the carrots) over winter. Peas and beans will grow and although you get horrible, leggy plants no good for the garden they would give you bulk. Overwintering broad beans could provide a few leaves (outdoors) if you didn't actually kill the plant by over picking again you wouldn't get a crop but this may not be a problem for you. Would he eat broad beans in their pods?

When you move or even in a small garden you could think about a plastic bottle green house for additional winter growth Find out how to make your own low-cost eco greenhouse from plastic bottles | Life and style | guardian.co.uk .Relatively inexpensive and much nicer to work in than a cold wet garden. Of course you might be able to set up a cage sytem for summer so that he could go out and ahrvest his own food on warm days. Good exercise, too.

Any way let us know how you get on.

Thankyou Paul, yeah I love harry potter and my colour of choice is green lol as many of my friends on the reptile forums know lol,

awwwwwwwwwww I have 5 corn snakes and a royal python? at least I think he is, hes either that or a pig with no legs! I have a little baby common boa too, we used to rescue reptiles but these days I am happy with what I am comfortible with and only focus on the few.

sounds like you have your hands full too, yes Albus can eat carrot tops but not on a regular basis, it isn't very good fed all the time but he does devour it the few times I have gave him it, if its used occasional its great for them, the saying to much of a good thing can be bad comes to mind lol
thanks for the link, the intention is to let him go out on the summer days the fresh air and natural sunlight would do him the world of good so we have been looking at that also

Spring greens are cabbages ...

Mustard, turnip & radish are brassicas too, or are they not high in the goitthingummies?

Nasturtiums are dead easy, and cheap. Which kind of marigold? English, French, African or Mexican?

Welcome to the vine SS. Hope you enjoy the forums and get the information you are after!

A high percentage of the iguana diet should consist of dark green, leafy vegetables. Eighty to ninety percent of the diet should be chosen from:
- collard greens
- turnip greens
- mustard greens
- bok choy
- Swiss chard
- clover
- red or green cabbage
- savoy cabbage

Beet greens and spinach contain oxalates that may bind dietary calcium should be offered only occasionally.

The same goes for kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower because these bind iodine and may cause thyroid problems. The Green Iguana


But hang on, the list at the top said 80% should be in the cabbage family (brassicas). Confused dot com

There's more reliable-looking info here: Feeding Iguanas

oI will have to check which type of marigold, |I know it is edible for us to and cabbages?

No they are not they are considerd closely related to cabbages, but the build up of minerals and and vitamins and nutritional content says otherwise, unlike some cabbages it does not form a head, to my understanding it is the leaves that grow around it! which is not actually the cabbage itself if that makes sense.
The greens is a term used for the leaves trimmed off brassica veggys but it is not an actual cabbage considerd similar , I got that from a biologist when I first began researching and started asking the exact same questions.

and no they are not those staples I listed all have excellent ca:P ratios
to put it in english
I am aiming for a ratio of 2:1 CA:P
reducing the amounts of oxolates as much as possible
minimising the intake of goitrogens which will cause dehydration and salt build up on the thyroid
blancing out with vitamin A
and being careful of sapoins.

none of the staples carry those toxic properties in large enough quantities to harm anything, cabbage (alll kinds of it ) do

Thankyou.