Container gardening

From liv­ing walls to nar­row win­dow ledges, con­tainer gar­den­ing is get­ting a new surge of inter­est among gar­den­ers. It can be very ful­fill­ing to grow plants in con­tain­ers, but it does need a lit­tle bit of atten­tion at the begin­ning. Con­tain­ers give us a chance to grow plants that won’t sur­vive an Ohio win­ter, to grow plants that require spe­cial soil con­di­tions, to bring your gar­den into your liv­ing space or to com­ple­ment the plant with a beau­ti­ful pot.

The first con­sid­er­a­tion in any con­tainer gar­den is the con­tainer. It is impor­tant that the con­tainer you select can sup­port the needs of the plants you want to grow. If you are try­ing to grow veg­eta­bles or fruits, you will need to make sure that the con­tainer has ade­quate room for the root sys­tem to spread out. How­ever, if you are grow­ing flow­ers or foliage plants, your con­tainer will prob­a­bly be smaller. If the plants are already started, it is not a good idea to increase the size of the con­tainer by more than a quar­ter (25 per­cent) of the orig­i­nal size. Mov­ing a plant to a pot that is too large can cre­ate an overly wet envi­ron­ment that can encour­age root rot.

It is also impor­tant to make sure that your plants are adapt­able to this type of envi­ron­ment. If you are plan­ning to grow more than one vari­ety of plant in the same con­tainer, take the time to check the light and mois­ture require­ments for each plant. The best con­tainer gar­dens will have plants that thrive in sim­i­lar con­di­tions planted together. It is also impor­tant to con­sider the growth habit of the plant. Plants with trail­ing habits should be planted at the edges of a con­tainer. Plants that have an upright habit tend to do bet­ter in the back or the cen­ter. Take the time to con­sider not only what the plant will look like when you plant it, but how large it will become as it matures.

Water­ing is the most dif­fi­cult part of con­tainer gar­den­ing, but it need not be. The most impor­tant thing to remem­ber is that mois­ture in a pot or con­tainer will evap­o­rate in the wind and sun out­doors. If you are grow­ing con­tain­ers that are out­side all the time, you may need to water every day. How­ever, the same pot will need watered far less often inside. With­out the dry­ing effect of the wind, there is less tran­spi­ra­tion through the leaves and less evap­o­ra­tion from the pot itself. If you aren’t sure whether to water, test the soil to see if it feels damp about an inch below the surface.

For more infor­ma­tion about grow­ing flow­ers and other orna­men­tal plants in a con­tainer, see ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1254.html. We also have infor­ma­tion about grow­ing veg­eta­bles, includ­ing spe­cific vari­eties that do well in a con­tainer at ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000pdf/1647.pdf and at ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1645.html.

Wendy Wolpert is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on May 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.