Container Gardening

One of the biggest advantages to container gardening is the level of absolute control you have over your soil conditions.

If you are planting in the ground, you are working on a grand scale that leaves you only a few options: accept the starting conditions you have been given and amend them through soil additives, or remove huge amounts of dirt and soil and haul in lots 0f new dirt and soil.

If you are growing vegetables in containers, on the other hand, you have complete control over what you put into the pot.  As opposed to planting vegetables that work in your garden conditions, you can create soil that is ideal for your container vegetables.

The first step is to decide what you want to plant and find the ideal conditions for growing it.  The main category you need to consider when growing vegetables in containers is the pH level of the soil.

Most vegetables like a slightly acidic soil: fortunately, most good soilless potting mixes are already slightly acidic because the peat moss which serves as a base to most of them is acidic.  If you are making your own potting mix, make sure to test the pH before planting in it.  If you balance your ingredients well, you should be fine.

Here is a basic summary of pH levels required for different vegetables.

After the soil is set up with a basic pH level, you will need to add fertilizer.  In-ground gardens can get some nutrients from the soil as-is: when growing vegetables in containers you need to be sure you are providing everything the plant needs to eat.

The easiest way to do this is to buy a complete commercial fertilizer with the correct proportions for the plants you want (10-15-10 will work fairly well for most vegetables, though you can fine-tune for flowering or leafy vegetables if you like).

If you prefer, you can use organic fertilizers, or otherwise fine-tune by adding nutrients in individual portions.

Here are a few tips to remember when working with your container vegetable garden:

1. Too much fertilizer can burn the plants.  You want to be certain to fertilize on a regular, steady schedule, following the directions on the fertilizer container.
2. If you get too much water, it can wash nutrients out of the soil.
3. Your plants are completely dependent on you for their nutrition.  If you don’t feed them, they can’t feed you.

Tags: Fertilizer, peat moss, Soil, Soil pH

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 7:31 am and is filed under Fertilizer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.