If you liked Faith's great post on how to make a one-pot herb garden, you are going to love the container gardening feature in the April/May issue of Mother Earth News.
Container Gardening in Mother Earth News
We're seriously garden-impaired, so we appreciated the section on self-watering containers, including the clever DIY number pictured left. And apparently some crops, such as artichokes and eggplant, actually grow better in self-watering containers because there is always water available.
A few other key points:
- You'll need sun for a container garden. Partial shade will do, but will limit your plant choices.
- The soil mix is key. If soil gets dry, it needs careful attention and repeated waterings until it is evenly moist again. (This is where we tend to go wrong.)
- Sadly, tomatoes need a lot of soil -- 30 to 40 quarts for a large plant! But, as evidenced above, there are varieties of smaller tomatoes that can be grown in smaller pots.
Check out the article in print or online at Mother Earth News for more tips, including the ideal soil mix and a great step-by-step how to on the water bucket left.
images via Mother Earth News site as credited
Comments (4)
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If you are looking to start a vegetable garden in containers you should check out containerseeds.com.
view http://badhuman.wordpress.com's profile
i have been research container gardening a lot. My wife is a vegetarian, and all we have is a balcony, so i'm going to try and grow some things out there.
another good seed place is parkseed.com they have a section dedicated just to container varieties. Gurnees is good too and i think fedcoseeds is another.
your local greenhouse should have seeds marked as container variety as well.
also check out this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Incredible-Vegetables-Self-Watering-Containers-Amazing/dp/1580175562
it goes pretty in depth to the size of planters, how to take care of them, different kinds, soil mixture, what types of plants, how to treat them etc. It's also kind of a plug for garderns.com. You can get self watering ones from there, they donated all of his to write the book... I checked it out from my local library, good info in there.
I am probably going to get a planter from agardenpatch.com. At least for my first time, after that i will try and make my own, but i'd like to have a control aspect to it where it's not that plants don't grow because i built the container wrong. Plus they have a 1 year guarantee, if you don't like it you get your money back, I figured it's worth a shot.
If anyone else is interested in what kind of plants to get, like i said i have been researching this for about 2 weeks solid and I have a pretty good list going of ones that are good (and that have reviews of tasting good since certain balcony varieties come out small both on size and flavor), leave a post on here and I can put the list up when i get home from work. I have about 3 or 4 packets of seeds i'm trying already and i just need to get some specific peppers that i can't find in stores.
view jmorey's profile
jmorey- i have that book and live by it! It has everything you need to know about growing food in containers, no matter what climate zone you live in! We grow just about everything you would in a dirt garden on our patio in Northern Alberta Canada. Even Potatoes!
view wendy-rae's profile
I'm using Earth Boxes and love them.
www.earthbox.com
view barrywe's profile