Container Gardening

Managing small spaces for gardening always requires some ingenuity.  When you are growing vegetables, and looking to fit large harvests into a smaller footprint, it becomes important to plan carefully and design your container garden to maximize your available space.

One way to get more from a small area is to grow vertically, rather than horizontally, by using poles and trellises in your container garden.

Many vegetables are climbers by nature, and well suited to trellises or poles.  Peas and beans fall into this category.  You can buy bush varieties of peas or beans, but even the bush varieties will usually benefit from staking.  The best yielding pea and bean plants tend to be the vining varieties, which can grow to 8-foot vines laden with pretty leaves and plump pods.

Cucumbers and miniature pumpkins are other good vining plants that will appreciate a trellis.  These heavier plants will often need a sturdier trellis than peas or beans, to support the weight of the vines and the vegetables themselves.  You can also sometimes find vining varieties of other plants, such as eggplant and summer squashes.

You can use some real creativity with trellising, especially in a container garden.  If you wish to make effective use of a wall space, you can mount a simple inexpensive flat trellis on your wall and let beans or teas climb up it.  The vines will climb to decorate your wall like ivy, with little flowers and bright leaves, and the produce will be easy to access.

You can also buy freestanding trellises for placement around your patio.  Bear in mind that if you plan to place a trellis in a container, the container must be large enough and have sufficient weight in the base to resist tipping over.  Plan for a deep container, and be certain to place the trellis securely.

One of the more dramatic trellises for placement in a container are pyramid trellises, which can be placed in the center of a large container.  If you start with a container of 24 inches or more , you can plant a pyramid trellis in the center.  By training beans up the plant and growing lower-profile plants such as herbs or salad greens around the trellis, you can maximize space for produce and make a dramatic statement.

Note that trellises don’t need to be expensive.  You can buy simple unframed trellises at your local lumberyard for well under $20, and you can build your own pyramid trellis by building a teepee of gardening stakes and winding rings of twine or fishing line around them.  A little creativity and effort can turn raw materials into an attractive and functional trellis.

Don’t be afraid to try unusual things in your container garden!  An old ladder, leaned up against a wall, can make an attractive trellis.  If you are using a shelf for your pots, try letting yoru peas climb the shelf itself.  Old chairs, railings, or any piece of furniture can be used as a support for vining plants.  The only limit is your creativity!

The easiest way to start out with container vegetable gardening is to choose a pot for each plant, make sure the pot is a good fit, and grow each plant in its own isolated splendor.  You can control the environment for each container separately, choose fertilizers for each plant, and do the work of planting each at the right time and without having to work around other plants.

However, it makes for much more attractive, full-looking vegetable container gardens if you plant a few different vegetables in a single container, and plan them so that one plant is finishing its life cycle as the next plant is beginning to really take off.  This is called succession gardening.

There are three real types of plants when it comes to seasons: spring, summer, and fall vegetables.

Spring vegetables can be planted before the final frosts have stopped, and are cold-weather hardy as seedlings.  Generally, they will produce up until the weather starts to get really hot, and then your harvest will dry up.

Generally, these can be planted in your container garden in March or April, though in climates with mild winters, you can start in February.  Some good spring plants include salad greens like lettuce, arugula, or spinach, radishes, or pea plants.

Summer vegetables should be planted after all danger or frost has passed.  These will thrive in the heat and grow to overwhelm your containers.  Many of them will continue to produce well into the fall, but their peak time will be summer.  Most of these are easiest to start from seedlings.  Don’t clear the entire container to make room for them; just make a space in the middle.  As they grow, they will crowd out your spring plants, making their own room.

These should be planted generally in late May or early June, though you can plant them as soon as your spring crop begins to die off.  Some good summer vegetables include tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash, peppers, and cucumbers.

Fall vegetables come in two varieties for me.  One are the true fall plants, hardy into cold weather, such as kale, Swiss chard, or fennel.  These plants will survive past a few hard frosts and continue to produce.  The other are the spring plants which could not bear the heat of summer, planted for a second crop in the early fall.

With either type of plant, you want to seed around the end of July, or a little later for fast-growing plants.  If you planted something tall in May, like peppers or tomatoes, you should clear space for the fall planting by trimming off the lower leaves of your summer plant.  If you chose something bushy, like squash, you can clear space around the outside of your container by trimming off old leaves.  When you’re done with your summer plant entirely and the fall crop has started coming in, you can remove the summer plant by trimming it off at the soil line.

Note that you don’t need to limit yourself to just one spring or fall crop!  Alternating peas and lettuce in a large container can give you extra visual appeal and a nicely varied harvest.  Also remember that you need more room for a succession garden than you would for any crop individually.  You want a container at least 18 inches in diameter for most of the succession planting described here.

I like container gardening with vegetables because it makes me feel more productive than just growing flowers.  I’m not just spending time in the yard working with dirt, I’m building groceries!  It makes me feel virtuous to be able to put a dollar value on my effort.

Just because I’m growing something usable, however, doesn’t mean I can’t make it beautiful, too.  How do you go about making your container garden beautiful?  Here are five tips for growing a beautiful container garden.

1. Pick attractive plants

Chives In Bloom

It may seem obvious, but plant selection is the first step to getting an attractive container garden.  Look for pictures of your chosen plants to see what they’ll look like at various stages.  If the look of wire cages turns you off, choose tomatoes that don’t need cage growing.  If the jumble of vines from a bush bean plant doesn’t appeal to you, don’t grow them!

On the other side, feel free to choose some plants primarily for their ornamental value.  I grow more chives than I need because they’re pretty, with the vertical stalks and fun purple flowers.  Many herbs have variegated varieties, with pretty stripes of color in the leaves.  Summer squash plants have really pretty flowers in the morning, and cherry tomatoes are absolutely beautiful when they reach maturity, with clusters of little fruits.

2. Pick attractive containers

This step can be trickier, since containers almost always cost more than your plants, and if you are working on a budget, the bland pots may be the most practical.  If you can afford dozens of beautiful ceramic pots, go for it!  If not, try accenting the garden with one or two focal pieces.  Start with small pots, placed prominently.  Select plastic containers in neutral colors for the rest of your plants, and the decorative pots will jump out.  Every year, replace a few plastic pots with more decorative containers.

3. Use different sizes and shapes

A row of identical 5-gallon pots of tomato plants is bound to be a bit dull.  Instead, choose plants with different sizes of pots, stems, and leaves, and place them near each other.  A tall tomato plant might be complemented by a shallow bowl of herbs or a windowbox of lettuce.  This keeps the garden interesting

This works particularly well if the smaller plants have particularly interesting colors, such as red cabbages or variegated herbs.  Just make sure to place the larger plants as background and the smaller ones as foreground, or you will lose the little ones.

4. Use different heights

If you place everything on the ground, the little plants will be more or less lost in the sea of pots, and the pots themselves will be much more prominent.  Instead, try to arrange some tiers or levels on which you can place plants.

There are a few ways to do this.  My container garden is arranged near the door to my sunroom, so I use the steps that are already there, placing larger containers on the steps and a windowbox on the wide railing.  You can also build inexpensive shelves with cinderblocks and simple wooden boards.  A low table can be a platform for a pot or bowl.

Don’t be afraid to hang things!  Hanging baskets of cherry tomatoes or herbs can add height and fill in empty spaces in a container garden.

5. Plant multiple items in a single pot

There are two reasons for planting more than one item in a single pot.

One is that many plants take a long time to reach maturity.  If you know your tomato plant will be two months in reaching its full height and don’t want to waste that 5-gallon pot in the meantime, you can plant some plants with quick crops, like radishes or carrots, to fill out the container in the meantime.  Full pots are much more attractive than empty ones.

Multiple Herbs in a Planter

The other reason is that the assortment of different plants in a planter makes it more interesting to look at.  When a single pot contains four or five types of leaves or flowers, it holds the eye better.  Try planting a few kinds of lettuce or squash in one container, or grouping herbs for contrasts.  Plant chives with basil and thyme to create three levels of herbs in a single pot.

Just because your garden is functional doesn’t mean it can’t also be beautiful.  Good luck!