Container Gardening

Well here's the good news - as almost every fruit and vegetable that grows in the ground can be grown in a container and what can be grown is really only limited by the size of the containers you are planning to use - not only has container vegetable gardening been done very successfully for decades - but as it negates the need to allocate a huge amount of space - is now extremely popular and very worthwhile too.

In fact - as nothing quite beats the reward of having a constant supply of fresh nutritious chemical and preservative free produce - which not only smells and looks better than anything you can buy in the store - but actually tastes a whole lot better and is way cheaper too - absolutely no reason not to give it a go.

Especially as its really only a matter of deciding what you want to grow - as apart from having the luxury of being able to choose from all the regular fruit and vegetable varieties available - with there now being many new varieties that are very suitable for growing in containers - for example - bush zucchini, cucumbers, beans, eggplants, peppers and even bush tomatoes - as well as several trailing tomato and zucchini varieties that can be grown in hanging baskets - you'll be spoilt for choice.

 

Growing what ever you want in containers is a great idea, containers take up less space and for those that have problems with their knees and the bending the caontainers are raised. Here is a good example of a stacked garden.

 

Growing in containers can work really well. There's always things like lettuce that can be grown on a window sill as well indoors. This can save on the space you do have outside if it can be possible to use window sills for growing anyway.

I use containers for growing potatoes in (I know I'll get them all that way!) and they always do just fine! I'd also recommend growing things like strawberries and tomatoes in pots. They can be grown easily in hanging baskets so can save some ground space.

 

I have in my little apt. backyard potted herbal plants that grows well. I've aloe that I eat and put on my skin at times. I also grew from seed broad leaf plantain that is giving me seeds this year that is so delightful! I grow some other plants like ferns we use for New Years celebration that is doing well just in pots. We use recycled water that I catch in my kitchen sink to water the plants. I also have a little dish for water for the wild birds that fly by all recycled water too. We don't have any dishwasher so I catch a lot of water while washing my dishes and pots and pans. Good luck in your new garden. You not only save money growing your veggies & fruits, but you can grow specialty herbs to keep you healthier too!

 

The best container gardens are sacks. You need to have a gunny bag. Put it in an upright position and stand a hollowed out container at the bottom of the sack. Then put soil around the container while adding gravel to the bottom of the sack through the container. As you add the soil in the pack, add gravel to the hollowed out container. Add progressively until the pack is full. The soil should be well mixed with manure. The gravel will serve as a conduit for irrigation. Plant on the sides by boring holes.

 

Whilst talking about space I've heard a little about square foot gardening. All the space you need is 1.5 Meters by 1.5 meters. Not that huge right? In that space you could grow 130 plants [don't know if that's true] and it would produce enough veggies for one person.

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Some fancy pots like that in the photo above can also serve as decoration especially when they are placed inside the house. The hard plastic is cheaper than the rubber although the latter is more durable. In fact, one of our small tree, the star fruit, is planted ina rubber pot which we bought for $30.

Here is the plastic planter box in the hotel where we stayed in Singapore. The lettuce are real and they are edible. The source of lighting is a sun lamp.

 

I've successfully grown tomatoes, lettuce and peppers in containers, and of course herbs. This year I'm not having any success at all with my tomatoes. I'm not sure if my carrots are growing, because after I planted them in the container, I was short on containers and put a shepherd's stick in there with a bird feeder. I didn't think ahead, obviously, and now I have all kinds of things sprouting in the container, from the dropped bird seed. When I get some time, I'm going to go through and see if I can resurrect any carrot plants and transplant them into another container. I can't remember the size of the pots I'm using, because I've had them for quite a while, but you can sometimes get ones for good prices at Big Lots and Walmart.

 

I think container gardening is less work and you get higher yields with less space also-but remember to use bigger containers for bigger plants. Some of the bigger container gardening ideas are the wooden half-barrel,buckets,baskets,boxes,and tubs to name a few. The clay pot is very attractive and so are window boxes as well to grow your vegetables.

 

I use plastic soda bottles to grow kale and bokchoy. It saves me a lot of space. It also saves me a lot of money because I don't need to buy special pots for planting.

 

Some do better in pots such as rose plants. All my rose plants are in pots although I have a lot of space. Then there are those chrysanthemums that do well in pots as well.

 

Container gardening has its own merits and demerits. On the positive side it is quite easy to manage the plant. Weed control is no more a headache and also there is no wastage of fertilizer as we can focus on that single plant. Also we can relocate it whenever and wherever we need. Like on a sunny day we can take it outside and in winter we can keep it under a shade or inside if required.

On the negative part, a plant in container needs regular watering and it can die if we fail to water it daily. But on land it can survive even without regular watering. I found that my plants on land give more fruits than those on a container. However, container gardening is a good choice if the the land available is quite limited.

 

Where we live, we have really poor soil. It is hard clay, and when it rains it is gooey mud, and then it is hot and dry, it is like cement. We have been composting the leaves on the lawn each year to help amend the soil; but even so, everything seems to grow better when I use a planter and purchase dirt and potting soil, which I mix together to plant everything in.
I use all kinds of containers, sometimes from the dollar store, or something I find at a yard sale, and even old milk jugs work great for smaller plants.

 

@Beast_Titan, I really like your soda bottles garden. I have saved a few bottles of soft drinks and have been meaning to experiment with planting a few vegetables in them but somehow, haven't got around to doing it. Your post gives me some motivation. Have you used the regular soil or some special potting mixture for your bottles?

 

I use the soil from my backyard but I fertilize it with compost. I was able to have compose because I keep worms and rabbits.

I keep rabbits for their meat and their poop is used as food for earthworms. The earth worms are fed with rabbit manure and kitchen scraps and that makes them able to make a healthy potting soil. There are tutorials on Youtube on how to vermicompose. It saves me money from commercial fertilizers.

 

We bought a star fruit tree that was planted in a rubber container. The star fruit is a small tree but it can grow big. After some years, the star fruit is now about 10 feet tall but is still in the same container. We have harvested countless of fruits and right now it is again fruiting with about 30 to 40 small fruits. It’s worth the cost of the money we paid for it, tree and container as a package.