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Container Gardening
How to Grow your own Vegetables at Home
Container gardening has recently become a modern trend in city gardening. Container gardening is the solution to limited space or no access to a big garden to grow your own vegetables, herbs or flowers. Here is a quick and easy way to get a container gardening system up and running to suit your limited requirements and lifestyle. This will ensure that you can have veggies, herbs and fresh flowers on hand at your convenience. To get started you will need a deep or wide container, depending on what you want to grow and how much space you have. Medium sized stones and small pebbles to help with drainage. A good source of potting soil and/ or compost. Once you have the containers, stones, pebbles and compost, you can begin to arrange them in preparation for planting. Remember that you can use vertical space. Utilize hanging baskets and wall fixtures to maximize the space you have available. Now you are ready to begin selecting the flowers, herbs or veggies you would like to grow in your container garden. You may want to grow some of the plants from seed yourself or simply get seedling from a local nursery. A good range of vegetable seedlings with shallow roots that can be grown in containers include lettuce, spinach, radish, carrots, onion, cherry tomatoes, beans and peas. Peas and climbing beans need to be staked. When selecting stakes for peas, make sure that they are branched, as peas do not like to grow on straight up poles. Another idea for home-grown container food is to grow sunflower sprouts. You cover a few seeds with your compost mix, lightly water the area and in a few days, there will be succulent sprouts, ready to be cut for salad. You can repeat this process weekly. To shake things up, try a selection of culinary herbs to supplement the vegetables. A variety of herbs that would thrive in pots and include parsley, chives, garlic chives, fennel, mint, thyme, creeping thyme, oregano and marjoram. In twenty-one days you can be eating radish, and the other crops follow along shortly afterwards. A good selection of flower seedlings that can be grown in containers include begonia, chrysanthemum, daffodil, geranium, impatiens, marigold, pansy, petunia, snapdragon and tulips.
Prepare a delicious salad utilizing the ingredients from your container garden: 1 fresh lettuce, shredded 1 fresh onion, sliced 2 sprigs of parsley, shredded 1 small bunch of garlic chives 2 sliced radish 1 handful of chickpea sprouts 4 sliced baby carrots 1 handful cherry tomatoes Add all the ingredients together. Drizzle with lemon juice and olive oil. Add your favorite spices. Toss. Tuck in and feel revitalized.
Author's Bio
Jeannine Davidoff is a mother, artist, writer, organic gardener, permaculture consultant, yoga teacher, freelance journalist living in Scottburgh, South Africa. My 21st century focus is on communicating knowledge and sharing my art. I have a blog that shows my collection of growing art, poetry and writings. I have a companion planting blog that describes individual plants,how they grow, their companion plants and antagonists, their herbal uses and nutiritional value. In a series of articles, I'll explain How to Start an Organic Garden in 5 Important Steps. How to intergrate Organic Gardening with Companion Planting. What organic means and the benefits of having an organic garden companion planting.