You may want to start gardening and grow your home grown food source in a small space. And container gardening is the easiest way to do this. It’s not particularly hard.
You can grow your flowers , herbs and vegetables with a deck, roof garden, container, plants , soil and water.
Here are a few tips to help you start your own home grown food source in a small spaced container.
Why Start Container Gardening ?
Having your own container garden is flexible . You can control the soil mixture and grow plants that won’t thrive in a natural garden soil.
You can move your container to take advantage of shifting sun patterns. Even in an apartment, you can always have your little garden without owning a yard and reap still all the benefits of it!
How Do You Choose What To Grow?
There are good options for container gardening and you must know before starting out. Think about texture, color, size and care. Consider light and water requirements of your plant. You can grow herbs such as basil, sage and mint. Vegetables such as green lettuce and tomatoes.
If you want to grow tomatoes in your container garden, check out these best determinate tomatoes for container garden.
You can use a shallow container with a wide surface area so roots aerates for herbs . Vegetables such as tomatoes may need deep containers like a bucket.
You must know of Light requirements. Vegetables and herbs may needs six to eight hours of sunlight per day. Shade loving plants shouldn’t be mixed with full -sun plants together in a container.
There are plants that needs little water and others needing much. It’s a total disaster to mix both. For example cacti and ferns. Conduct a thorough research on your choice plant.
What Do You Need To Start?
Equipment and materials to use may include: gardening towel, potting mix, water, containers, plants of choice, soil, scissors, manure and sunlight.
How Do you Choose The Right Soil?
Soil play major role in your container gardening success. Ordinary soil wont do well. Use a specialized potting mix and not the garden soil you dig from outdoor. Researching the best soil mixture for your plant will help.
You may want to check your local garden center to see if you can get suitable soil mixtures . However, filling a larger container with soil can be expensive especially if you want the roots to expand.
But it’s cheaper to add filler to the bottom of the container using inert materials that can enhance drainage. You can use plastic bottles as inert material.
A piece of landscape cloth should be laid under filler and topped with potting soil while doing it this way. (Tip: learn how to prepare soil for your container garden)
How Do You Choose The Right Container?
Tea cups, whiskey barrels, buckets and many ordinary objects around the house can serve as containers. Ensure there’s proper drainage in the container. Soil mixtures should be appropriate too.
Small containers can’t hold too much potting mix. A couple of containers should be kept to serve as replacement once you clip one plant and ready for another.
Herbs such as mints grow like weed and may need separate containers. Note you can either purchase or create your own containers.
How Do You Ensure Good Drainage?
Watering plants is good, but drowning them in the process is a disaster. Planters must have good drainage system so they can live and grow. Clay pots are best for this. Clay come alive while plastics are impervious to evaporation.
Either your create a drainage hole for your container or to make sure it has before purchasing it. Your plants can die if water pills at the bottom of your container.
How do you care for your plants?
Use a specialized potting missed soil for your garden. You must find sunny areas for your plants. For sprouts, give a few inches of space around the doors. Seedlings do well when scattered across the planter.
Fill your containers firstly with soil before watering. Water the plants base. Use a hand-held garden cultivator for surface soil aerating.
Tip: Learn more on how to take good care of your plants here
How Long Will It Take To Grow Your Plants?
Depends on what you planted. Flowers, herbs, vegetable or fruits. Some herbs will take 2-3 weeks to grow and sprout. Keep a couple of containers for replacement so you don’t run out of supply after harvesting.
There are seasonal growing plants and flowers you may want to keep for a long time. There’s absolutely nothing to be anxious about . Enjoying the process makes it a little bit lighter and easier.
How Do You Harvest Your Plant?
If leaves and vegetables, use scissors to snip. But firstly , the base of the plant so it doesn’t stop growing.
What Do You Do With Soil After Harvesting?
Compost soils do well in storage. You can always keep your soil and reseed for a new crop if you don’t have other available containers as replacement.
What To Expect Of Some Container Grown plants?
Lettuce : Cool weather crop. Lasts until the end of October. Check out the taste before clipping. Lettuce turns sweet first before going bitter.
Tomatoes : You may see full leaves before sprouting.
Basil: Flowers should be clipped before plant goes to seed.
Arugula : A cool weather plant too. Needs shadier porch and sprouts effortlessly with full sun everyday.
Conclusion
Conclusively, you can start your mini garden asking around your neighborhood home gardens or looking out for magazines.
Going for online research, Expert advice like the one on this article can help you grow even fruit trees in containers if you employ some or all of the steps written above. Good luck in your container gardening journey!
Want to grow ginger? Check out the best containers for growing ginger.
Further Reading
- Container gardening – A summary
- Container gardening for the poor the hungry and the malnourished
- Container gardening to combat micronutrients deficiencies in mothers and young children during dry/lean season in northern Ghana
