Window Box Veggies
So, you think you don’t have a place to grow a vegetable garden. Well how about raising a few tasty organic veggies right on your deck or patio?
I’m sure there are plenty of empty containers and pots around the house that would work very nicely to create your own edible garden on the patio or deck.
Growing Vegetables in Containers
I just wanted to share the results of a window box container that I planted with various vegetable plants earlier this spring. The window box is ten inches wide, twenty-eight inches long, and contains about seven inches of light potting soil and compost mixture.
The container is loaded with edible goodies; three heirloom eggplants, a sweet bell pepper plant, a couple of cucumbers, and even a watermelon vine. All of the organic veggies are growing nicely and the cucumber has already begun yielding fruits.
If you’re careful to keep the plants watered and give them an occasional dose of an organic fertilizer, the container gardener can harvest fresh produce just as easily as the gardener growing crops in the ground.
Great Choices for Edible Container Gardening
With a proper container and a little ingenuity there’s no limit to the types of vegetables, fruits, and herbs that you can cultivate regardless of whether or not you have a backyard or garden. Other edibles that will grow well in containers include: tomatoes, Swiss Chard, kale, strawberries, lettuce, radishes, leafy greens, and squash.
Then there are the herbs and edible flowers that will be perfectly content and make themselves right at home in a simple pot or container. Rosemary, chives, thyme, bay laurel, nasturtiums, parsley, basil, sage, and others will all flourish in containers. The smaller herb plants can be grouped together in a pot or strawberry jar, while the bay and Rosemary will stretch out in a planter of their own.
With a little more effort and care your patio garden can even include fruit trees such as figs, dwarf pears, citrus fruits, dwarf peaches, and columnar apples that are suitable for container culture.
If you’re interested in learning more about edible container gardening pick up a good gardening book such as; Edible Container Garden, Little Herb Gardens, or McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container, which all focus on the details of raising edible plants in containers.
Other Related Vegetable Gardening Posts:
- Earth Box Container Garden Video Review
- Contact Information
- Sombody, Please Talk Me Out of It!
- Cold Frame Gardening
- Cut-and-Come-Again Leafy Greens
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February 10th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Growing up, I always helped my grandparents (on both sides of the family) with gardens. Now that I’m 22, have a house of my own, and starting a family, I want to start a vegetable garden as well. Unfortunately, I don’t really know where to start. I can’t count how many tomato plants, bean plants, squash, kholorabi, etc etc I’ve planted, but I was always told where and how. Over the years, some of the information has kind of faded. Where do I begin?
February 12th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Jessi, sounds like you probably know more about gardening than you’re giving yourself credit for. I would say to just go for it and get started again. There is a ton of great gardening information available at no cost on the Internet. There are also good gardening books available at the bookstore and library. I have also written a gardening eBook that covers all of the basics of growing a vegetable garden. So where do you begin?… it always starts with the soil! Good Luck!