NBR: Advice on starting a container garden

Re: NBR: Advice on starting a container garden

• Morgieloo member

  March 2014

  My advice is don't get behind on weeding! It's easy to get behind on it. I had great success with tomatoes, eggplant, spinach, squash, zucchini, and herbs. I also did a cherry tomato plant that yielded a lot. I cheated and got plants already started at lowes. Good luck!

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• SuperTinkerham member

  March 2014 edited March 2014

  Mustard greens are easy, but they get bitter if you let them grow too big. Okra also grows pretty well, as did cabbage. Although it made us laugh at the okra. It grows straight up, like an erect dog penis. Yikes. Oh and the okra are also ending to be picked sooner rather than later. Big ones are tough and stringy.

   

  

  

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• 1982Babies member

  March 2014 edited March 2014

  Too funny, my dad was just calling me about this.
  
  We don't bother with the pods - we just get cups and put soil in them and put a seed in and let them start in a dark area, then move them to the area with grow lights (or if you have a nice, big window to put them in front of, that's good too - he has cats and no sunlight, so he uses grow lights).
  
  I've done it in my basement before on old shelving, but the cat was a jerk and knocked 50% of them down.  Since then, I've had my dad do it at his house, since we share the bounty anyway.
  
  Edit:  Don't bother starting things like lettuce, kale, herbs and peas and such indoors.  They grow so quickly outside, it's not worth it.  I think we've got artichoke (no idea how thos will turn out), tomatoes, peppers and eggplant started in multiple varieties.
  

  *SIGGY*
  Baby G born 6/6/14, 37 weeks 1 day due to preeclampsia.  5lb12oz 19"
  #2 due Christmas 2016. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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• abrazz member

  March 2014 edited March 2014

  DH starts the seeds with grow lights but I used to just buy the little plants since I didn't have room in my apartment. Mother Earth News has lots of tips for growing in containers

  

  
  

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

   

   

   

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• TugboatSheila member

  March 2014

  Hey Thanks guys. I was thinking about starting with just 2-3 things (for example, tomatoes, cucumbers and blueberries). And if I don't kill them all in a week then next time around do more until I finally have a garden. 

  
  

  I'll check out Mother Earth News!

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

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• unaveragejane member

  March 2014

  I have a hard time getting seedlings to stay alive once I move them outdoors, so I either buy plants at Home Depot or wait until the frosts are over and start seeds in the ground outside. For containers, tomatoes, egg plant, and bell peppers are great. You'll probably want determinate tomatoes b/c they make a bushy plant that will need less staking than the viney indeterminate ones. The tags or seed packet should tell you. I also hear strawberries are good container plants, but I haven't tried them yet.
  
  I'm not sure I would do okra in containers just b/c you only get one or two pods per stalk at a time, and to have a good mess of okra, you need a lot of plants yielding at once. (Does that make sense?) I'm not sure you'd want to fool with it unless you had a lot of pots. Other plants I would personally not do in containers (b/c of size) are yellow squash, zucchini, beans, and peas.
  
  Also, with containers keep in mind that the soil can dry out really, really fast. I have to water my potted plants every other day in the summer (unless it rains) b/c they dry out so much faster than plants growing in the ground. Being in pots also IME makes them more sensitive to direct sunlight, I think b/c the roots dry out and get hot so easily. When I do tomatoes in containers, I have to put them very close to the tree in our backyard so they only get early morning sunlight or they burn up really quickly. On the other hand, when we put them in the ground last year, they had no shade at all and did fine as long as I kept them watered 1-2x per week.
  

               

  
  

  

    

      
  

   
  

  
  

   
  

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• cbpj2012 member

  March 2014

  If you can do any square foot gardening, that's the best! We did several boxes in our yard last year and had fantastic yield! We start 90% of our seedlings ourself but they are just as easy to buy at a nursery/greenhouse.
  

  

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