Container vegetable gardening is so easy. It is simple to grow an entire salad right in your deck or patio! Try lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, radishes… you can also grow cabbage. Think how nice it would feel to walk out your kitchen door and harvest whatever you need for tonight’s supper.
Container Gardening
And container vegetable gardening is cool for the kids, also. It’s a wonderful family activity and brings everybody together. You may plant and plan with your children, then gather around the table and eat what you grow. And as an additional bonus, if you would like an environmentally friendly garden, home vegetable gardening goes right along with organic gardening methods.
Container vegetable gardening is also flexible. Many veggies you are able to grow from the ground are also perfect for your container vegetable garden. Much like herbs and blossoms, success is based upon the perfect quantities and balance of sun, soil, water, and fertilizer.
- Sun: As a rule of thumb, vegetables that bear fruit (peppers and cucumbers, for example ) need sunlight. If you are container plants are root vegetables, they can tolerate some shade, but not as much as leafy vegetables like collard greens.
- Soil: Great soil for vegetables is similar to great dirt for tomatoes-there’s lots of debate about what works. Some favor soil-less mixes since they are not as likely to compact in mid-summer.
Potting Mixes
It is also possible to purchase very good regular potting mixes and garnish with compost, water dyes (if you want), and time-released fertilizer. Also, vegetables generally prefer a slightly more acid soil than neutral (so a bit less than 7.0).
The one thing you have to do? Your vegetables must be grown in soil that is free of diseases and pests. This is the reason lots of advise to not use garden soil-bugs and ailments can over-winter and make a mess of your baby veggies.
Container vegetable gardening is prone to the very same sorts of drying-out issues as herb and flower gardening. The lighter the dirt, the more it rains. The ideal balance is a soil that retains enough water to sustain your veggies, but is well-draining so the roots are protected. A loamy, rich soil and watering once the kettle’s dry down to three-to-four inches, ought to be fine.
Fertilizer
Some folks swear by compost and manure tea, some such as time-released fertilizers, and some favor synthetics which you mix with water. You do need to quimically fertilize vegetables-they definitely need more than simple soil to do well. You may also consider off-week fertilizing with a weak solution which includes iron, zinc, boron and manganese.
And again, the more porous your soil, the more often you will have to feed because the water leaches out any fresh fertilizer. This is the reason many prefer organic compounds-they discharge more slowly and are available to roots more.
Where to Plant
Determined by how much sunlight you’ve got and what you would like to grow, you can grow vegetables in containers in any outdoor planter location.
Don’t forget the fences! Vining veggies like pole beans and cucumbers will do very well winding up fences. You may even plant in hanging baskets. Trailing tomatoes and thyme are really pretty-and tasty-planted together. Window boxes, too, are large enough to grow some veggies.
Pots
Container vegetables are extremely forgiving. Really, nearly the only two requirements are drainage holes and sufficient space. Half-barrels, glazed ceramic pots, plastic pots… you can use just about anything. It really depends upon the two items I said, and your own taste.