Simple Gardening

Welcome to Simple Gardening

Article

Container Gardening Indoors and Outdoors
Mary Hanna

Container Gardening Indoors and Outdoors By Mary Hanna Copyright 2005

For years people have been gardening in containers, mostly because they lacked space. For some it was because they lived in climates that wouldn't allow them to grow year round. Container gardens afford you the option of planting outside until the cold forces the container inside, next to a sunny window.

Most container gardens were planted by people that lived in apartments but still wanted the addition of color and the feeling of accomplishment when seeing their plants grow. Big, beautiful showy flowers have a tranquil effect that soothes you at the end of a long day. Container gardening need not be limited to apartment gardening, everyone should have their own. Most certainly you don't have to stick to flowers in containers. You can grow vegetables and herbs in pots.

By adding garden pots it allows you to put spots of color around green shrubs or trees to brighten any corner of your yard. Placing containers filled with your favorite flower adds loads of appeal to a walkway or paved patio. The fun part of that is you can rotate the pots to different locations adding a new looks or colors with every move. Putting autumnal colored Mums in pots or spring tulips in a container allows you to landscape by season keeping your garden bright and interesting.

Your container can become a mini garden. For example when we lived in Pennsylvania our front yard screened us from the road with 10 feet tall evergreens. Although it was good for privacy, it made it very hard for guests to find our house. To fix this problem I purchased a half of a whisky barrel painted our name and street number on it and placed on the lawn at the end of the driveway. Then I filled it with some organic matter, planted bright red geraniums in the center and placed trailing ivy along the outer edges. Not only did it help our friends find us but the whole neighborhood used it when giving directions to their friends and family. Everyone would come up to us and say, "Never move that pot of flowers, it's our favorite landmark."

Don't limit yourself to a barrel, anything can be used, a watering can, an urn or big boldly colored ceramic pots, even a wheelbarrow. Use your imagination when it comes to the containers you will plant. A friend of mine would go to the Italian restaurants around town and ask them for their used large olive oil cans. She'd take them home and plant a bunch of mini gardens. This created an interesting and colorful spot unlike any in the neighborhood. She would plant herbs in some of them so this little garden had two uses.

For container gardening use a fast draining potting soil mixed with a little coarse sand. I always use pots with holes in the bottom to ensure good drainage. You may know exactly how much to water the plant but if you have a rainy spell it could be the demise of the mini garden that has no drainage system. Fertilize well and often, nutrients in a container can leech out.

Repotting will be necessary as the plants will become root bound as they thrive. Just go to the next size container and plant a new flower or herb in the original pot.

Go to your garden nursery center and look thru the selections. Choose plants that will harmonize and colors that go well together. Container Gardening is fun and easy and a great way to show off your handiwork.

About the Author

Mary Hanna is an aspiring herbalist who lives full time in Central Florida which allows her to garden and grow flowers, vegetables and herbs inside and outside year round.

Contact: mary@gardeninglandscapingtips.com or visit her garden site http://www.gardeninglandscapingtips.com

Gardening Software Best products

Gardening Software News

gardening software

Courtnay Daniels surveys her Blue Garden. In this bucolic area 20 miles west of Jefferson's Monticello, Ms. Daniels has devoted much of the last decade to 15 acres of gardens filled with rare and unusual trees, flowers, grasses and shrubs. There's a ...

How Her Garden Does Grow - Wall Street Journal

Share AN ONLINE store selling everything from home goods to gardening and bar equipment is to set up in Galway, creating 200 new jobs. But in Shannon there are fears for up to 150 jobs, with meetings today discussing potential cuts at Element Six ...

Online store to create 200 jobs but fears grow at diamond firm - Independent

Sybyl's Holiday Wish List is a collaborative effort among human service agencies and The Flint Journal, coordinated by the Resource Center. We encourage Journal readers to consider these gift requests so people in need will be remembered at the ...

Sybyl's Holiday Wish List is your chance to volunteer, donate to a ... - MLive.com

Mass merchants have customers with wide-ranging tastes looking for any number of products. Specialty retailers, however, are filling a niche. And in niche retailing, it’s critical that merchants know their customers very well. The 27 retailers in ...

Sporting Goods - InternetRetailer.com

He will lead a $641,000 project to develop strategies to address the obesity problem, focusing on improving diets and increasing physical activity levels. Among boomers, 72 per cent of men and 58 per cent of women are overweight. "The unprecedented ...

Fat baby boomers cost economy $4bn a year, says Graeme Hugo - News.com.au

A new source for information on contract talks between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) drew a mixed reaction after its debut in early December. Board of Education Chair Pam Costain said The MPS ...

Items pertaining to Linden Hills neighborhood - Southwest Journal

Thanks for all your comments on my previous post . My apologies that this one is late (due to technical problems beyond my control ). Some of you have asked what exactly I'm doing. As I explained before I'm now in charge of the POV boards. So I'm ...

Points of View Message Board 2: Off Topic and Off Site - bbc

NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Green Bay, WI, United States, 11/05/2008 - Grow UR Way is a new social network build around Gardening, Lawn Care, and Landscaping . Grow UR Way, an innovative new Social Network that has just been launched that provides ...

GrowURWay.com Introduces A Revolution in Gardening Care - Newswiretoday.com

So I already wrote about Andrew Keen's ridiculously laughable assertion that the economic downturn would spell the end of all unpaid activity online -- such as blogging, contributing to Wikipedia and developing open source software. The whole thing ...

Andrew Keen Predicts The End Of Gardening And Pickup Basketball - Tech Dirt

Imagine being able to tell what would thrive in your garden, even before you plant it. Plus, Microsoft is developing a new Windows operating system. It's all in Tuesday's Tech Bytes: Microsoft announces the future of Windows. The software giant says ...