Urban Container Gardens

We have discussed gardening for people who have larger yards or some land. But what about those of you who do not have the luxury of living out in the country, but want a garden of your own? Well today we are going to go over a few basics of Urban Gardening to try to help you out.

Today we will focus on container gardens; these are great if you have a balcony, sunny window, roof, or patio area where you don't have any usable dirt, but have space to keep containers.

You will want to plan your container garden, just as someone who uses land needs to plan their plot. You will need to look up your USDA zone so that you know which plants grow the best in your region. After discovering which plants grow best, you will need to decide which of those plants are ones that you want to grow.

With a little practice, experimenting, and hard work nearly any plant that grows in the ground can thrive in a container. However, if this is your first try you might want to stick with plants that are easier to get going until you gain more practice and skill with gardening.

Nearly any container that has holes in the bottom for drainage can be used for your container garden. You can easily use a galvanized bucket or tub as a planter for your container garden, just drill some holes in the bottom. Now keep in mind if you are going to have your container inside near a sunny window, you will want something underneath your container in order to catch the excess water that will run out.

When filling your container with soil keep in mind the needs of the plants that you will be growing so that you can be sure you have the proper soil pH. You might also want to go ahead and purchase fertilizers etc that are recommended for your plants so that you will have them on hand if needed.

Watering is a tricky aspect to container gardening. You will want to water them thoroughly when you water them, but you will not want to water them too much. As you can kill a plant by over and under watering.

Now, there will be the occasional failure, even the most experienced container gardener experiences these. But as you get more experienced the failures will become further between, and you will learn ways to recognize when a plant is failing and how to bring it back from the brink.

And as always, we love to hear from YOU! So please let us know about your experiences with container gardening, which plants worked the best, what tricks have you learned?

View one of our employees first container garden attempt.