BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Container Gardening Describe your container garden

Hello everyone!

Please describe your container garden.

How many containers? What kind, size, shapes etc? How big is your space? a Deck? Balcony? Patio? Porch? A small garden with placed containers?

And then what are you growing right now? Have you any plans? What do you want to grow but not yet got started on?

Lotsa questions just to get your thoughts going, but please 'say a say' on anything related to your containers - I would like to get to know you through your gardens which in turn will help me write the kinds of articles and topics to suit you first.

Cheers and here's to a good week (we are all just back from an extended holiday period here in S A).

I've got about a dozen pots on my deck. I planted two heirloom tomatoes which are at this moment looking beautiful. I hope they continue. I planted a hill of pole beans in one and put a trellis in the pot. It is a square pot. However, I am not sure if the beans will sprout. In a container about two feet by one foot long, I planted carrots and radishes. The radishes have sprouted. Also, planted are a variety of flower seeds and some dwarf dahlias. In my flower boxes, are dwarf plants and petunias. I have some additional petunias to plant if the veggies don't sprout. The reason I am not sure about some of the seeds, they may be old. We'll see. I'll keep you posted. I also have basil and oregano.

Hello Angie,

Sorry that I have not answered your post before now!

Here in SA that container you describe for your beans being rectangular and longer than wide we call a 'planter' and I have quite a few. I find that with space restrictions, a person can get more action going for many reasons and they are easy to manoeuvre and access and care for in a way. If I have understood you correctly, then it should be as deep as it is wide and twic or three times as long. It is time to do another article on a vegetable so I will be writing one for you very soon on beans.

I grow chives with my carrots (or marigolds in the ground) and am one of those who thinks that the chives (or shallots) for some reason give the tomatoes a beter flavour! Still it's just taste and no proof really. In terms of radishes, they are quite strong flavoured plants and I prefer to grow them on their own and again I would not grow them with carrots, these two are not the best of pals and radishes tend to inhibit carrots from full growth. Again it is just what I have found so I would be interested to hear how your carrots get on and if they do grow full length and not stubby like mine did... mindyou, stubby carrots come from a lot of other reasons (like the wrong soil, stones in the ground and incorrect watering).

But that having been said, it seems that you have your work cut out for you and a nice choices of growth and colour and herbs veges and flowers and alternative plans. I have not really been lucky with my dahlias, so if you have any tips to pass on I would like that, I don't know, there are so many varietals, such beauty in dahlias (I particularly like the spidery one and also the tiny pom poms) but any that I have planted just do not perform for me. Maybe it's my feeding? Dunno.

Guess you like pasta! Pizza? Pesto anyway.

Thanks for telling us about your garden, appreciate it. And P S your hierloom tomatsh should taste as good as they look!

Cheers

Well, my tomatoes are doing OK although I nearly lost one to aphids. I pulled a branch off the tomato and planted it in another pot. I'll see what happens.

The basil is doing beautifully and I have already pulled leaves and put them in the freezer. I found a recipe where you chop the basil with olive oil for future use but I do not know if I will do that or not.

The beans are growing. The oregano is putting out again this year. The carrots did not come up. Some of my seed may have been old and didn't sprout.

The flowers are doing very well.

I'll keep you posted.

I would say that before last year I did compost, peat and perlite. Sorry that i don't remember the correct amounts, i just mixed it on a tarp until it looked good to me. I had amazing results with my tomatoes in containers.

Around my backyard along the privacy fence I have a rock garden with running birdbaths and container plants and flowers. I have square and round pots, along with wooden pots. One of my favorite pots is my dad's old ice cream maker. This in in memory of him. Dad would always pull it out when I wanted homemade ice cream. This was the type that you had to churn yourself. Lots of memories there. I love my container's because they are decorative, and since I live in the houston texas area, if it gets to cold they can be easily covered or moved to the garage. I have impatients to palms going in my containers and have about 40 containers.