Monday, March 29, 2010

Container Garden

I've decided to start a container garden this year, as my patio gets just enough light to get "stuff" to grow. I had started some stuff from seed, but only the tomatoes and peppers made it.

I planted a strawberry pot with lots of herbs, and another strawberry pot with strawberries. I have an Early Girl tomato that I bought from Home Depot, as I don't have faith in my tomatoes that I planted. I also bought another pepper plant, so I think I'll be making a lot of fajitas, chili, sloppy joes, and stuffed peppers with all the peppers I'll be harvesting.

My favorite roses are the Peace rose, and I bought one to plant. My track record with miniature roses is an across-the-board failure though, so we'll see what happens. I also bought a packet of Crystal Palace Lobelia to plant under the rose; I think it will make it look really nice.

I hope this experiment turns out well. If the strawberries don't last through the year I'll probably try alpine strawberries next year in the strawberry pot. I tried some years ago when I was in Amsterdam and thought they were delightful.

Here are some container garden resources:

Container Vegetable Gardening - from Ohio State University
Vegetable Gardening in Containers - from Texas A&M (pdf)

2 Soliloquies:

Krista said...

I planted a few things in pots too for our small backyard. I don't have much faith in their success, but we will see.

Good luck!

Diane said...

Thanks Krista! Good luck with your garden too!

So far things have been looking all right; other than killing off all of my herb seedlings I haven't had any other dramatic disasters.

I'll probably update this post with photos when I get around to taking them. I'm particularly proud of my herb pot (even though I didn't technically grow any of those plants, they have transplanted well).

The other day I came home and I found a handful of ladybugs hanging out around my pots; they haven't left yet. It was really delightful and totally made my day.