How to Tips For the Best Container Gardens
Do you long to bring more fresh taste and flavor to the meals that you prepare at home? Then forget about buying more new cookbooks and kitchen accessories and choose a more convenient and affordable option that can help you ramp up excitement when it comes to better tasting meals. People that are serious about creating great home cooked food know that container gardens can be the answer.
Choose Compact Plants for Containers
Growing a variety of herbs and vegies does not require a large amount of garden space. It does not even require a great deal of work if you carefully select the types of plants you want to include in your container gardening efforts. Choose compact plants that are low maintenance whenever you are considering suitable options that will thrive in a container environment. You will then be rewarded by a bounty of edible items throughout the growing season.
Today you can select many different plants to grow in even a very limited space such as a small container. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs and lettuce are favorites. However there are bush cucumbers, space saving varieties of squash and potatoes, and even some melons that do not require a lot of growing room. These vegies will thrive in a variety of container gardens.
Any herbs can be grown in containers if you just match the sizes correctly. There is need to overwhelm small cilantro, thyme and basil plants with oversized pots. If you want to use larger containers, then you should group 3 or more of the smaller herbs together and maximize the space available.
Create a Theme for your Container Garden
With an Italian or Pizza themed herb garden you can give some true Italian flavor to a number of pastas, breads, pizzas and sauces. Basil, rosemary, oregano, sage, parsley and thyme are a few of the herbs that you might want to grow in some containers on your windowsill. Or you can set the containers out in a dedicated garden area near your kitchen door. Using bits of these fresh herbs will take any meal from ordinary to extraordinary in just a few minutes.
Cilantro, chives, onions and garlic add zesty flavor to many Italian dishes and they can all be easily grown in even a limited gardening area. These are low maintenance plants that require very little time and effort. In fact chives, onions and garlic can grow and thrive in some of the poorest soil. Cilantro is the only one that prefers a little shade from the sun, but feel free to give the others full sun all day long.
Reasons for Choosing Container Gardens
You can even make this new garden a family project. A number of people are opting for container gardening because it makes sense for many reasons. You can move any of your plants to the best locations according to whether they need more sun or more shade. Containers also allow you to provide your plants with the finest soil possible, and even give you a way to enjoy almost 100% weed free gardening.
When you use containers for your plants you can embrace the organic gardening philosophy and this method even keeps water loss at a minimum. Pound for pound, most experts agree that containers are exceptionally cost effective for people who want to enjoy a kitchen style veggie and herb garden.
Use a good gardening soil to fill the containers. There are even some bags of soil that help hold water and then release this moisture to the plant roots when it is needed. You should not skimp when it comes to selecting a good grade of soil to use. When you give your plants a good foundation you will be able to grow the healthiest specimens. This will then result in a bumper crop of produce that will you and your family can enjoy.
Clean and Green
When you grow your own edible plants at home you get that “just picked” freshness that intensifies the delicate tastes and flavors. It is also reassuring to know that these plants are clean, healthy and bacteria free. Of course you still have to rinse them before use, but you know exactly where and how they were grown; and you also know who picked them. Today with so many bacterial diseases being transmitted through various types of produce every pro-active step you can take will contribute to your own peace of mind.
Instead of taking your chances with lettuce from the grocery store, just grow your own in a shallow container at home. Select a variety of leafy lettuce seeds and sprinkle them onto some top grade gardening soil and in just over a month you can harvest fresh leaves each day for your home salads.
Stretching your Budget Dollars
You also can stretch your budget even further when you choose to grow your favorite plants in containers at home. Many people do not realize how much money they can actually save by “growing their own”. For less than the price of a few fresh basil leaves you can grow a dozen or more of these plants right on your deck or windowsills.
Go for It
Container gardens provide you with money saving produce and herbs that are healthy and full of flavor. The initial cost involved is very low and you can make this gardening project as simple or as involved as you like. If you have been considering growing some edibles at home this is a great way to begin and who knows, you might just have a thumb that proves to be “Emerald Green”.
