ENJOY SOME CONTAINER GARDENING (PART 1)!

Greetings all. I posted the above apple blossom from one of my apple trees as a way to capture your attention for this post on container gardening. It is always nice to have a beautiful flower to begin any post. I have been asked numerous times about doing a post on container growing of flowers and vegetables. I use a variety of techniques and it brings a dilemma as to where to begin. If all goes according to plan I will do an ongoing series of container growing.

As noted in previous posts I have plenty of land to raise vegetables and flowers, but have been experimenting with different techniques of using containers. I do this both indoors during our winter months , as well as outdoors during late Spring to early Fall. Some are grown in a small greenhouse and some outside. I started doing the container gardening primarily as an indoor project, but it carried over to much more. Now it is a way to show people how they can grow vegetables (and flowers) even if they do not have a lot of space. I also started thinking that maybe when I get into my 90's I will find it easier to keep growing food this way.

I would like to begin with growing micro-greens. I have used variations of this over the years, but this past winter and even now in the Spring I am growing micro-greens outside. This first photograph is showing the start of the process, which is seeding. There are ways to grow micro-greens without soil but I find an organic potting mix works best for me. When I am finished with the soil I add it to my garden, and I believe it is less expensive. Here I plant the seeds thicker than I would planting on rows in the garden. I press them into the potting mix with a piece of wood and then I will add a layer of potting mix on top of the seeds. I also press the soil down using the block of wood showing. In these flats are buckwheat, sunflower, beets, salad mix from the cabbage family, and peas. Once planted I cover with cardboard so they do not dry out.

The next two photographs show some of the greens ready to start cutting for salads. I have also juiced them, and have used them in soups. The first set of flats are after a couple of weeks, and the second a little longer. Most are ready to start cutting for salads. The beets keep growing new leaves and the peas grow more and I get a second cutting.

The next photo is showing lettuce plants in pots, then radish (which are ready to start pulling a few small ones to thin the planting, and then I am experimenting with scallions in a container.

I am editing and adding this photograph of a few cucumbers I grew in containers. They are developed for container growing. They range form 5 inches to 8 inches long.

I mentioned in my weekend post that I had been working on potting flowering plants in pots for my wife on Mother's Day. To make it easier to move the pots around I built small platforms with casters to better push the pots around. The smaller pots are easy to move the larger pots can get heavy. I have two more pots that I am planting seeds, and these will be larger pots. The first photo shows the bottom of the platform and the second photo I am trying to capture the essence of the flowers (I will have more photos of each flower in future posts):

This post just touches on container growing. I am hoping to do a series of post with different methods and material I use. I hope you will enjoy this series that I am starting. I am hoping to this series during the week and keep my weekend post the same as it has been.