Container Garden 411

Container vegetable gardening has so many benefits, it’s hard to believe more people aren’t doing it. Saving space is the greatest benefit of container vegetable gardening. Many people live in apartments or in homes with very little yard space. Container gardening allows you to have a vegetable garden on your porch or patio, or even indoors.

Some people have these gardens in their sunroom, in the kitchen window, or even in the window of a spare bedroom. Others utilize a closet space to grow plants by using a grow light.

Another major benefit of container gardening is the ability to move plants if you need to. If you’re growing your plants outdoors and bad weather comes, you can bring them inside where they’ll be safe. If your vegetables are getting too little sun or too much, you can easily move their containers to a better location. And you can even move your plants on a whim if you decide they’d look better elsewhere.

Vegetables grown in containers don’t contract diseases as easily compared to plants grown directly in the soil. It’s true that plants grown in containers can still become infected with diseases, but you will find the probability is much less than if you had grown them in your landscape. Potting soil is generally free of disease-causing organisms, so your plants will be safer.

It’s easier to feed your vegetables when they’re in a container. You can make sure that the fertilizer you put in with the plants will get to them. When you use fertilizer on plants in traditional gardens, often it will end up going to other plants or just drain away. When the plants are in containers, this is not as likely to happen.

Since your plants are in such a small area, the fertilizer may be washed away quickly. This means that you should take the time to fertilize the plants more often than plants that are in traditional vegetable gardens. However, usually you’ll find that plants get more fertilizer even though it washes away quickly than they would if you had them in a traditional garden.

You’ll also be able to extend the growing season of your vegetables when you have them all in containers. You can wrap the pots that your plants are in with blankets or other materials for insulation that will help keep them warm. This way you can easily start plants inside and then move them outside when it gets a bit warmer. You can also use careful insulation to continue to grow vegetables after the first frost, and you can even bring them indoors once it becomes too cold to keep them outside even if insulated.

Another advantage to container vegetable gardening is that it increases the accessibility of the hobby. For persons with physical disabilities and impairments, using containers allows them to enjoy and tend to plants in convenient locations. If a person uses a wheelchair, they can put the pots on a short table to make them easier to tend to. Elderly gardeners who are finding it more difficult to enjoy typical outdoor gardening will find that container gardening offers the same joys but with less work. Even small children find container vegetable gardening to be fun and easy, since they don’t have to have someone till the soil and there isn’t raking, weeding, and hoeing to worry about.

If your space is limited for vegetable gardening in a traditional landscape, then using pots instead is a great alternative to allow you to enjoy your plants.

Vegetable container gardening is a fun activity. Although it eliminates the thrill of traditional vegetable gardening, growing vegetables in containers make the activity more challenging. However, with so many available materials to read, a novice gardener can get overwhelmed by all the tips or pointers that are presented by these materials. But the good news, gardening is actually easy as 123. If you are like me, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel, or spin your wheels. Right. You see, the methods of garden preparation and maintenance are thoroughly discussed in detail and in so many versions, but the basic knowledge that is applied in gardening is actually the same. Here are some ace in the hole points that you can use in starting up and ensuring the success of your vegetable container garden.

• On soil type selection. Since you are gardening in containers, choosing the best type solid for your garden will be convenient. All you need to do is step out and reach the nearest garden shop. The lack of yard space is sometimes an advantage; it eliminates the trouble of soil testing and preparations prior to gardening. Ask for the most experienced shop keeper’s advice on container vegetable gardening. Allow him to help you select the type of soil that you need. Also, be guided by the soil type recommendations that are placed at the back of the label of vegetable seed packets.

• On pots and pot sizes. The size of the vegetable dictates the size of its container. As long as the container provides ample space for the vegetable to grow, you can virtually grow anything on the container. For shallow rooted crops like lettuce, peppers, radishes and herbs, it is advised to make use of a container that has a minimum of 6-inch diameter with a 7-inch soil depth. Gardening containers are basically offered in various sizes, shapes and materials. Whether you choose clay, wood, plastic or ceramic containers, what’s important is its drainage capacity. The container has to have enough holes to allow excess water to drain rapidly and prevent over watering- a common container gardening problem. The material and the type of container are irrelevant as long as it sits right and allows proper drainage.

• On your vegetable selection. The choices for vegetable container gardening is diverse; ranging from beans, to leaves to fruit bearing shrubs and herbs. However, here are some of the ideal choices for gardening beginners. Green leafy vegetables as in leaf lettuce will do great. These vegetables just keep growing. Having them cultivated in your garden allows you to fill up your salad bowl every time. With regular watering, a garden of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and cucumbers will do great. In growing beans, you may need to have a trellis which also makes a charming accent for any garden. For ease in cultivation, many of the vegetables, with seeds available in sealed packs, is especially bred or hybridized for container gardening.

• In actual gardening, all you need to do is proper placement or containers. Ideal vegetable container garden setup requires 5 hours or more of exposure to sunlight. Make a routine schedule of weeding, cleaning and fertilizer application to ensure healthy growth among your vegetables. The only downside of this type of gardening is that frequent need to water. Vegetables are 95% water; avoid drying them out for it can drastically reduce your yield. Similarly, over watering can be disastrous. As a rule of thumb, stick your finger into the soil to effectively determine whether the soil is moist enough or already dry. 

So there you have it. Follow these pointers and you can ensure success with vegetable container gardening. The more you do, the better you will get and the more you will the produce you grow.

Container gardens can create a natural sanctuary in a busy city street, along rooftops or on balconies. You can easily accentuate the welcoming look of a deck or patio with colourful pots of annuals, or fill your window boxes with beautiful shrub roses or any number of small perennials. Whether you arrange your pots in a group for a massed effect or highlight a smaller space with a single specimen, you’ll be delighted with this simple way to create a garden.

Container gardening enables you to easily vary your color scheme, and as each plant finishes flowering, it can be replaced with another. Whether you choose to harmonize or contrast your colors, make sure there is variety in the height of each plant. Think also of the shape and texture of the leaves. Tall strap-like leaves will give a good vertical background to low-growing, wide-leaved plants. Choose plants with a long flowering season, or have others of a different type ready to replace them as they finish blooming.

When I first started planting flowers in containers, I did everything wrong. I packed the pot with dirt, not understanding that my flowers needed to breathe just like me. I put flowers that were pretty, and not appropriate in the planter. I purchased the wrong planters sometimes at the advise of a staff person at a nursery. I bought and spent a lot of mula on stuff that didn’t work.

Then I went back to the fundamentals. I began to read, and research myself. I talked with people. I mean if I went past a house that had beautiful flowers, I stopped my car, got out and walked up to the door or person and engaged them in a conversation. I asked a simple question, “What type of flower, is that?”. I have been filled with so much knowledge that it turned the flicker for flowers I felt into a deep appreciation for their beauty.

I now know the names of may flowers, and their preferred habitat. I am in no way an expert, but one day soon I will be. I want to have the most beautiful containers in my town. I have created container arrangements for my neighbors, church, anyone who asks.  What’s in my container garden is love, creativity, beauty, and after hard work, much joy.

Gardener