One of the best ways to get quality vegetables and a decent sized yield, or to get a beautiful landscape in a minute area is by the use of containers. Small gardens do not necessarily yield small vegetables or flowers. You can pack a lot into a small container. Container gardening, for those who have not gardened before, is also quite forgiving. You can grow virtually anything in a container garden that you can grow with an in-ground garden, and you may well get a better yield than you did in the ground.
Selecting the right pots for your container garden
Your container garden doesn’t require a vast array of space for your plants to do well. You can quite often, just by virtue of what you are using and the portability of it, start your vegetable plants from seed rather than using plants. This saves time and money, as well as allowing you to see that you’ve got the best soil that you can for your containers. Starting with seed is a good idea for nearly any plant in a container garden. Begin them inside and then move the pots outdoors. They are very portable, as previously mentioned and as such, you can rearrange them as you like, provided that you are careful in what kind of plants you’re using and how much soil you put into the containers. If you’re going to be planting things which will require a much heavier pot and more soil, try to plant them outdoors after all danger of the frost is past so that you need not move the pots any more than necessary.
You can quite easily plant anything from vegetables to flowers in your container garden. Vegetables such as carrots and beets will do well in any container garden provided that you use a pot which is deep enough to house them well and give them ample room to grow to their full depth. In most cases, a good rule of thumb will be to get a pot that is at least as deep as your vegetable plant is tall. This includes the roots as well as the plant tops. In the case of very tall plants which grow above the ground, you’ll want to keep your pot about half the height of the plant to prevent the plants from being top heavy. Let common sense guide you as to the size of the container that you’re going to use for your plants. If you’re growing carrots, you’ll want a pot that is at least a foot deep to give your carrots plenty of room to grow and enough room for them to spread out and grow well.
For flowering plants, you’ll want to select a plant that is at least 9- 12 inches deep and slightly deeper if you’re going to be using vining plants, particularly if they are going to be vining plants that house berries. You’ll want them to be deep enough to be well seated in the pot so that the weight of the plant does not pull them out.
Plant pots for your container garden are common sense more than anything else. You will be able to grow a great deal of produce in a very small space when you select the right pots for your planting. Growing vegetables in small spaces is far simpler with container gardening. You’ll get a lot more vegetables for your space when you grow a container garden and they are well suited for patios, driveways, porches and even decks.
You need not spend a lot on containers for your garden. Browse yard sale and garage sales and you’ll find a wide array of low cost pots. Nearly any thing can be a container garden, depending on the size of the plant that you house in it. Terra cotta pots are also low in cost and deeper to allow you to grow vegetables in container gardens and are well suited for veggies like carrots. Spending more than you have to on anything isn’t a wise idea and if you recycle other containers–provided they have never housed any toxins of any kind, you’ll be reducing waste as well. Tubs such as you purchase for storage can make ample sized container vegetable gardens and many other kinds of pots can be used that are not really designed to house plants. Think outside the box to get the containers that you want and to get the look that you want for your container garden.