Getting Started on Our Container Garden

This year, we have a porch/ yard large enough to start ourselves a nice container garden. Container gardens are great for people who rent (like me) or who have limited good soil in their yards, or even for people who can't commit a ton of time to their gardens. I had one the last time I lived in a house and I loved having fresh herbs and tomatoes around all the time.

This year, I have been trying to get it planned out to get the most out of the space we have and to yield the maximum amount of crop. Not easy. I did finally narrow down the list of herbs and vegetables that we are going to go for. I tried to stick with the things we will get the most use out of or that we can can or freeze if we get a lot more than that.

For herbs its best to stick with the varieties that will do best growing in smaller pots or fill in one big pot with several varieties. That way they don't take over and you are less likely to grow more than you could ever use. We will be growing cilantro, mint, lemon balm, rosemary, and chives. The lemon balm will actually be going in the ground but the others we will be planting in small containers and growing in the kitchen window to keep the bugs and weather off them.

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The fruits and vegetables will be a little more labor intensive. Most vegetables grow best in a 5 gallon pot or bucket while fruits will do much better in the ground. So we are going to split them up. Granted, we will be doing mostly veggies and tomatoes so that won't be too hard. The things that will actually be going into containers are tomatoes, blueberries, carrots, and eggplant. The blueberries will be going by our front door but the rest will go on the back porch.

The fruits that we will be planting in the yard will be a couple of blackberry bushes and perhaps a raspberry variety too. I would love to plant a lemon tree but they tend to take years before they bear any fruit and since we are renting, that is a hard commitment to make.

So, that's the plan! This weekend we hit up the gardening stores to gather supplies until it comes time to plant out doors. We have to gather the pots, fertilizers and soil but we also need to invest in some bird wire and I would love to make us a compost bin but we will see if I can get that working in time. Wish me luck!

Are you a gardener? Do you have any tips or advice?