BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Container Gardening About To Start My "Herban Garden"!

I am very excited about being able to start my own roof-top style garden! I'm calling it that but it's not exactly on the roof. We have an upstairs deck, that's uncovered, and about 20 x 20. I plan to place large containers around the sides to grow herbs and some veggies.

I would love help getting started - and I plan to post pics so you can see my progress!

I'm really in the planning phase, so I haven't bought anything yet. What I want to grow is a mix of herbs - basil, parsley, chives oregano and cilantro. I'm thinking about putting Rosemary in a pot by itself and let it grow into a little tree.

The veggies I'm thinking about are cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers, sweet peppers and baby lettuce.

Any suggestions, tips and cautions from the group will be much appreciated! I have a little knowledge of gardening but not expert by any means.

Oh, and I'm getting a little wood plaque to paint the name of my deck, "Herban Garden" : )

Wish me luck!

Nancy
BellaOnline Yoga Editor
CEO, Nutrabeautiful, Inc.

Unless you plan to clip and dry the clippings most of your herbs will require a large pot for outdoors, it is difficult to keep small pots, that get the necessary amount of sun for herbs, moist enough to keep your plants alive. Additionally, basil, parsley and oregano grow into quite large plants, and oregano spreads almost as much as mint does. Cilantro will bolt and go to seed quite quickly so it is good, if you really like fresh leaves and not coriander seed, to plant several smaller pots at two or three week intervals and put them in a semi shade area, if they get full sun and it is quite warm they will bolt and go to seed quickly. a drip system with a timer on a nearby faucet with frequent short watering intervals makes for an easy low maintenance pot garden setup and you can find kits for it at local hardware stores and the instructions are included you can find a timer there as well. You might want to start your plants inside now, if you have a south or south east facing window/s large enough to provide a good amount of sunshine. By spring they could be fairly mature plants and you can harden them to outside gradually in the spring and they will be hardier and more tolerant of the summer heat on your deck that way. Make sure your pots have good drainage and put saucers under to protect your deck, if you get a lot of precipitation be sure to dump the excess water from the saucers and turn your drip system off or you will rot the roots of your plants.

Depending on your night time low temperature you can likely grow lettuce outside now, and if the night stays in the mid 50s you can do peppers too, it takes a nice mature plant to grow nice peppers so keep the blooms picked off till the plants are 18-24 inches tall and bushy for sweet peppers, and the mature height specified for your hot peppers then they will have the stem strength to carry several large heavy peppers with out breaking or falling over, separate the peppers hot from sweet as much as you can to avoid crossing that can happen with some varieties. Tomatoes and cucumbers like high 60's to 70's at night to really thrive so wait a bit on those till the weather warms up they can take 100+ but not cold, the lightest frost will kill them. Tomatoes and cucumbers like lots of sun and lots of water, and don't forget to feed your plants too!

I started an indoor herb "garden". It's actually five pots cilantro, parsley, thyme and a couple of others. Even with my lack of green thumb - they are growing pretty good.

Cool! Glad to hear you're going forward with this. It's so much fun and I bet you'll use what you grow all the time. I generally have a whole lot of basil left at the end of the season, so I make pesto and freeze it--great on potatoes, bread, pasta, etc. I'd love to hear how it goes. Virginia

I need to clean up the 2009 summer container garden. The weather and trip put me behind. I'll try to start planing what I would like to tackle for next year too. Herbs are good - I've always got mint and oregano but I need to try some new things.

Trimmed back the dead plant material in my pots but now need to take out the root balls from some of the pots. I s it better to toss out all the potting soil and start over with clean materials? I think I need larger pots this year for some of my plants.

I was reading that in late winter it is better to put the perennials into larger pots and add potting soil in the new pot to supplement what is already there. With the annuals, I can just cut them out of the pot, and when I'm ready to plant new seedlings, add new soil for new plants. I will then compost the remains in my not so perfect compost pit. Once the pots are emptied, they will need to be cleaned. There were no signs of disease last summer so I will just scrub them out good and not use a bleach solution.

It feels like early spring today but January and February are often full of wintry mischief.

It's snowing today - we have about a foot right now. The containers on my deck are covered with snow and it will be a month before my deck clears. The last frost can be as late as May.