Simple Easy DIY: Container Garden

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I'd put up a gardening post (finally). I held off on photographing our container garden until it grew a bit because it was looking a bit pitiful. I bought the plants in May, then proceeded to pot them and put them out on the deck before we had our last "frost". Container gardening is super easy and I learned some lessons from last year that I'll share with you too.

Firstly try to pot everything separately. I made a mistake of trying to utilize too little place for too many plants last year. I got some of the Topsy Turvy standing planters, putting herbs along the top and peppers and tomatoes out of the sides. Bad idea. One of the cucumber plants that I had put out of the side to climb up the railing got sick and then all the plants started looking not so good. Also if you can get your hands on some Alpine strawberry plants, I would recommend them over the traditional red berries. The birds won't try to eat them because they end up being a pastel yellow and the yield was fairly decent despite the much smaller berries. I didn't have time to scour around for them this year so we just did the regular red strawberries but now I wish I had spent the time to find the Alpine ones. So far we haven't been able to pick one berry to eat because of the crazy amounts of rain and the birds getting to them first.

I have always used Miracle Gro mix with room temperature tap water to fertilize once a week and have been happy with the results. A few other tips, don't pick fruits before/during rain, just wait until you have a drier day and pick them. I usually prune off any leaves that look sickly or spotted. If you are looking for a nice organic pesticide/herbicide/fungicide try Neem. The premixed spray is more expensive over time but the effort of mixing in concentrate and then deciding what to do with the extra (because you mix a gallon at a time) proved to be a bit of pain for a small container garden but would be better suited for a larger garden.

Ancho Peppers