How To: Container Gardening Part 2

Time for part two! If you're just joining us part 1 can be found here. I will answer some questions pertaining to container gardening in this post. I'm going to go ahead and jump right in:

What kind of dirt should I use for container gardening?

This is something that has differing views, but I will give you mine. There are a lot of products out there that seem to have a good purpose but that you can probably do without. Go to any garden section at a big box store and you will find 15 different kinds of soil for specific situations. Maybe these have merit, like I said I am not a pro container gardener. But some of the reasons I've read for using container specific soil don't make sense to me. I've read not to use garden soil because it gets compacted, however the soil in my garden gets compacted over time and it works fine for growing vegetables. I've read that you should buy specific soil because garden soil may be too acidic or basic, but again, the soil we use in our garden works just fine. Another reason I read was that garden soil may have weeds and pests in it. That is true, and buying soil will help you avoid that, but it seems like a bit of overkill to buy new soil every year just to avoid some weeds and bugs. So my suggestion is to use what we use in our garden: a 2 to 1 ratio of top soil and amendment. Amendment is basically a bag of organic matter (compost, peat moss, mushroom mix and a few other things) that adds nutrients and other good stuff to your soil. I would recommend checking out a local garden store or nursery, they usually have what you need as well as a lot of good advice!

Photo of the Day: 04.08.14

I absolutely love little kid drawings. They are so unique, honest, and often times a little bit on the strange side, which just makes them that much more fun. I am going to branch out from gardening a bit, and the easiest place to start in my mind is to post about Adelle. I may be a smidge biased but she's the coolest four year old I happen to know. Here is her latest drawing: a ghost. His mouth looks a little scary, but he's waving so I'm pretty sure he just wants to be friends. She named him Ghosty the Ghost and he likes to eat brownies.

How To: Container Gardening Part 1

One thing that is so great about gardening is anyone can do it. There are plenty of different methods when it comes to gardening, but they all follow the same basic principles: plant seeds or a plant in the dirt, water it, and let it grow. I know that a big concern for a lot of people who want to garden is space. Many people have small yards, rent their homes, or live in apartments which would quickly rule out an in ground garden. But never fear, just because you are short on space doesn't mean that you can't grow yourself some food.

the large pot was $10 at lowe's - they were on a big flat
in the outside garden area and were all very brightly colored

First off I just want to throw it out there that I do not have much experience growing in containers. I am hoping to remedy that this year; I am growing cantaloupe, cucumbers, lettuce, dill, cilantro, oregano, basil and strawberries in containers this year. I might even pick up one more big pot and see how one of our tomato plants does in a pot vs the garden. But the internet is a wealth of information so I've tried to round up some good information on the subject. As usual I wrote far too much, so I have broken this up into two posts. I am also seriously crunched for time this week so the next post will come at the beginning on next week, I am shooting for Monday but bare with me!

First off let's talk containers. They can be almost anything so don't be afraid to get creative. Here are some cost effective options:

• Cheap pots: I can't find a link, but I found the huge pot in the photo above for only $10 at Lowes 
• Flea market finds: think wooden boxes or metal pails or buckets
• Five gallon buckets
• Making planters with or from pallets like this or this
• Plastic storage tubs: this would work of you wanted something wider but still deep, or if you have some extras lying around
• Upcycling! Find containers that would normally be thrown away and get to planting. If you don't like the way they look Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint ($4 at Walmart) works wonders. The large pots I got from Lowes were bright blue which I wasn't digging (garden puns!) so I spray painted them.
• use old kitty litter containers (the big ones)
• use tire as planters in your yard
• apparently you can go to bakeries (like the Walmart bakery) and ask for icing buckets which are large buckets that they will often give away for free
• grow food in a reusable grocery bag like this tomato plant and this lettuce
• grow directly in a bag of soil

Seed Update #2

Long time no see! Please excuse the fact that I fell off the blogging bandwagon for a few weeks. School started back up for me which sucks up a pretty good chunk of my free time, but I have a few posts planned for this week. Today I am going to show you some photos of how my plants are looking. Some of them are doing wonderfully, others have gotten off to a slow start, and some of them I am having trouble with. My next post (scheduled for Thursday) will be about container gardening. FINALLY! I wanted to get that post up much earlier, but better late than never, right? In that post I will go over what containers to use, which plants will work best, how to get started, and what we are growing in containers this year.

our tomatoes 3 weeks ago - 3/12

largest and smallest, both yellow cherry - 4/1

We planted our seeds about a month ago and we have about a month before we can plant anything outside. This excludes broccoli which was the only cold weather starter we did - more on that in a minute. So far the tomatoes are doing wonderfully...I could not be happier! They are not leggy, stalks seem strong, and they have plenty of leaves by this point. They are also growing at a crazy pace. The photo on top was three weeks ago and the next photo is from today. Huge difference! The second photo also shows my largest and smallest tomato plant - they are the same variety they just sprouted at different times.