Photograph Copyright 2005 Thomas Brown Enterprises

Green Thumb
by
Rosemary Fern

Rosemary is a published writer with 40 years of experience gardening. She has written many articles on gardening. Gardening is becoming a lost art. She enthusiastically tries to spread the word and save our seeds for future generations. She has a special interest in heirloom and endangered plants and seeds. Her latest project is teaching her five-year-old granddaughter the wonders of the garden.

New Twist on Container Gardening

There are many ways to grow vegetables with little or no gardening space. Container gardening is a great way to grow some summer vegetables with little expense and easy great results.

Containers vary with personal preference. You can grow just about anything in a container, fruit trees, banana trees, avocado trees, dwarf citrus can be grown and moved from one location to the next, outdoors in the summer and into the greenhouse or house during the winter. How ambitious your container garden develops depends on your room available.

It is always a challenge to grow vegetables in small spaces. Everyone is familiar with pots or hanging baskets of flowers or vegetables. Patios could easily accommodate a fruit tree and a scattering of hanging pots for different. Try a hanging salad basket with different lettuces, radish, and small onions. Tomatoes can be grown in a hanging basket or a pot on the patio. Squash can be grown in either depending on the variety you chose, bush or vine. You are only limited by your imagination. Don't forget those flowers. Mixing and matching adds interest, texture and color to any patio.

If you have a small yard and not room or facilities to till the ground or you do not have time to weed a garden try bag gardening. This could very well be the low- cost way to satisfy the need to grow vegetables and flowers, yet conform to the by-laws of your living situation.

Buy a 40 lb. bag of composted soil or composted manure. Place the bag on the ground where you want the plants to grow. Punch about a dozen small holes in the bag for water drainage. Turn bag over. This will be your planting side. Decide what you want to plant. Flowers and vegetables look great together. Potted vegetable plant starts are quick an easy way to have an instant garden.

If you want a salad hanging garden, fill container with composted manure, sprinkle seeds onto the compost and with a fork rake lightly over the compost. Water well. Seeds should sprout in a few days. Read the package for more information. You can always plant more than one variety of lettuce or other vegetables with your lettuce. Draw a line across the compost plant lettuce on one side and radishes, etc on the other. Be sure to water every day on hot days.

Tomatoes are one of the favorite vegetables grown in containers. When planting in containers plant one tomato in a pot and be sure to stake it to support new grown and weight of the fruit. If you are growing a bag garden plant one tomato on one side, a pepper on the other and lettuce and a marigold in the front. One large bag will accommodate two peppers or cucumbers or squash plants. Just poke a hole and plant your potted starter plants from the nursery. Separate the plastic a bit around the plants or seeds to allow room for growth.

In the summer if it is hard to water your containers morning and night. I like to leave room in the very center for a plastic two-liter bottle to stand. Poke very small holes in the bottom of the bottle. Place in the center of your bag and bury with dirt. Fill the bottle every other day with water. The water seeps slowly into the soil keeping your plants thirst free all summer. Containers or bags need more water than traditional gardens. Containers don't have mulch or other plants to shade them and have only a little soil to hold necessary moisture, the heat puts heavy demands on the plant and water evaporates quickly. Just be sure to keep plenty of water handy to give them a drink when needed on those hot summer days.

If the plastic of your bag garden appears unslightly, cover with leaves or grass clippings. When the growing season is over slice the plastic open and pull up. Mix the soil and leaves together and let sit until the next year. Save your bottles for the next year or recycle them.

Listed below are some varieties that do well in containers.

These varieties do especially well in containers.

Tomatoes: Patio, Pixie, Tiny Tim, Saladette, Toy Boy, Spring Giant, Tumbling Tom, Small Fry

Peppers: Yolo Wonder, Keystone Resistant Giant, Canape, (Hot) Red Cherry, Jalapeno

Eggplant: Florida Market, Black Beauty, Long Tom

Squash: Dixie, Gold Neck, Early Prolific Straightneck, (Green) Zucco, Diplomat, Senator

Leaf Lettuce: Buttercrunch, Salad Bowl, Romaine, Dark Green Boston, Ruby, Bibb

Green Onions: Beltsville Bunching, Crysal Wax, Evergreen Bunching

Green Beans: Topcrop, Greencrop, Contender, (Pole) Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder

Radishes: Cherry Belle, Scarlet Globe, (White) Icicle

Parsley: Evergreen, Moss Curled

Cucumbers: Burpless, Liberty, Early Pik, Crispy, Salty

Rosemary Fern

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