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Container Vegetable Gardening

Container vegetable gardening is simple if you give the plants regular care and commitment.

The Container

The first thing is to find suitable containers. I know I can grow a tomato in a green garbage bag holding six shovels of soil but unless I want to water it twice a day, I need a container that will hold twice that for my efforts at container vegetable gardening. I could add twelve shovels of soil to my garbage bag but that is pretty ugly sitting on an entertainment patio.

You could use one of those Styrofoam flowerpots that resemble clay; I’d want a big one (twenty-four inches across is ideal) and clay will be a little too heavy to move around for some folks. You can use anything you like for your container vegetable gardening as long as it holds approximately ten to twelve shovels of soil. Half whiskey barrels are ideal but you won’t move them very far. I use my eighteen-inch clay pots because they’re big enough and I like the clay “look”.

Holy Containers

Ensure there are holes in the bottom for good drainage because vegetables really do not like to have wet feet and if we have a summer like last year’s deluge, we’ll both need all the drainage we can use. If I had a wooden deck, I would probably put several bits of wood under the pot to keep it off the deck and prevent staining.

Artificial Soil

I am going to fill my pots from top to bottom with an artificial soil mix like Pro-Mix. Remember you do not have to put anything in the bottom of the pot (like old clay pot shards or stones) to “help” the drainage. These supposed helpful bits only reduce the water movement according to modern soil science research. The artificial soil will not compact like real garden soil (never, ever use real garden soil in container vegetable gardening as it turns to concrete after a month or so of watering) and when I feed it with my compost and weekly compost tea, it will produce great crops.

Any Veggies

You can grow any vegetable you want in your magic container vegetable gardening efforts. Let the kids have a pumpkin, let the old geezer across the street grow a potato or turnip (that’s what old geezers grow) the old hippy couple can grow all the herbs they can use for an entire winter and you can grow anything you like because it’s your container. My container is going to have an entire salad in it.

I intend to start with a tomato in the middle. I’ll stake it with a tall bamboo pole so it will grow straight up and once it gets a few feet tall, I’ll remove the bottom leaves to admit more light to the soil. Tying it up to the pole will be a weekly event as it gets tall enough to attract squirrels.

Bottom Salads

This will leave lots of room around the bottom of the plant so this is where I’ll grow my salads. I’ll start my spinach and lettuce from seeds approximately six to eight weeks before I want to eat them. Spinach can go into the barrel quite early – about the beginning to middle of April – and it will be up and ready to harvest the smaller leaves before the tomato is planted in the middle of May. Sow lettuce every two weeks for a steady supply of greens over the summer. If you like radish, consider planting them with the lettuce so as you harvest the radish, you thin out the rows giving each lettuce plant more room. The basil seeds will go into the ground at the same time as I plant the tomato. I do need fresh basil for my tomato sandwiches. Remember not to plant seeds too deeply and to keep them well watered until they germinate a week or two later.

Consider combinations you might grow in your containers. If you like salsa, combine tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and cilantro together.

Colour Conscious

If you like your veggies to brighten up the garden, why not use purple eggplant and red peppers together?

Herbs are a natural combination and your basic windowbox can produce more than enough taste sensations for an entire family.

What You Use

The key here is to grow what you’ll use.

Don’t grow lemon grass if the closest you’ve ever been to Thai cooking is watching somebody eat it on television but do grow tomatoes and oregano if you like making pizza or toasted tomato sandwiches.

Note that radishes, bush beans, basil and carrots are great for kids.

Throw in a sugar snap pea or two to trail over the edge and the kids can enjoy their own garden all summer long.

Water

Remember that we have to water regularly and feed our container vegetable gardening experiments with a compost tea or fish food fertilizer at least once a week to keep the harvest coming.

Doug’s first rule of gardening states that you only have to feed your plants if you want them to grow leaves, flowers or produce fruit.

Feeding

You have to feed the plants weekly With artificial soil (with any soil actually) you have to feed weekly. You see, nitrogen is the engine of plant growth but it is water-soluble. So as you water from the top, the water dissolves the nitrogen and carries it out the bottom of the pot. In order for the plant to keep growing, you have to replace the nitrogen from the top on a regular basis. I like to mix compost at around 10% by volume into the soil mix and then feed weekly with a fish food emulsion. It does tend to drive cats and raccoons nuts with the smell but it surely grows great plants.

You have to water your container vegetable gardening efforts properly The trick to watering containers is to apply enough water every time you water so that water runs out the bottom of the pot. Then you wait until the surface is “just” dry to the touch and you soak the pot again. Regular soakings take water to the bottom of the pot and keep roots alive right to the bottom Light waterings dry out the soil at the bottom of the pot, restrict root growth and reduce the yield. The rule is simple: water until the water runs freely out the bottom of the pot every time you water.

Prune vegetables upwards. So tomatoes can be staked. Watermelons can grow on a net supported by stakes. Cucumbers can do the same. Pruning upwards saves space and prevents the weight of the fruit from breaking trailing vines or pinching them against the side of the pot. You can allow some vines like cucumbers to trail over the edge of the pot while you stake a tomato up the middle (use a really large container like a half-barrel for this trick).

Varieties

Pick varieties that are suited for container vegetable gardening Pick a bush cucumber rather than a vining type. Pick a “determinate” or bush tomato rather than an indeterminate one that will grow forever and take over the patio or balcony. Use mini-varieties.

Harvest regularly There’s few things worse than not harvesting vegetables regularly when they are in a container. You’ll quickly see them grow rank and ugly and become unsalvageable. Picking regularly keeps them growing and producing.

Use environmentally sound methods of pest control when container vegetable gardening Most of those are found on this site and will not be repeated here.

Enjoy! yourself and involve the kids in your container vegetable gardening. This goes without saying. Growing cherry tomatoes or sugar peas comes with its own rewards when you watch the kids harvesting vegetables (or sneaking them because they taste so good)








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