Jan

Spring Container Vegetable Gardens

Although it’s still January, it is good to start thinking about about what vegetables to grow this spring – especially if you are starting from seeds. Container gardens are a great way to grow your own produce, it tastes better, saves money, and can be relatively low maintenance. Growing anywhere from one plant to dozens, herbs to tomatoes, you know exactly what goes into your produce – and bonus, it looks good!

I recently moved into a condo with a nice sized balcony so all my home grown food this year will be in containers. I am looking forward to working with container gardens and am planning on there being an abundance of vegetables. My budget for the outdoor garden is $50 (and I’m hoping it will be less) including pots, fertilizer, soil, and accessories. Start small and don’t worry if you don’t have a green thumb, a lot of plants today are formatted to be disease resistant. To make it very low maintenance, buy a already started plant , add a time release fertilizer spike and all you have to do is water. This can become more complicated as you get more confident.

To save money on pots, you can buy the not so pretty black plastic ones that you get at the nusery. They are not super durable but work fine for small container gardens – nuseries might even just give them too you. I am also going to buy some peat seed starting pots, because some of my plants I will be starting from seed.

Also needed are:

Sterilized Potting Soil
Vegetable fertilizer spikes and/or water soluble fertilizer (This year I will be buying Happy Frog Organic Vegetable and Tomato)
Mulch
Watering can
Plants

Every place is has different needs for what can grow, water amount, etc. This is a great website to get started in your area – local.garden.org. Click on your state and then city and then edibles.

Here are the 8 plants I plan to start from seed this season. (Click on the image to go to Park Seed Co. and get more info). I will most likely buy my herbs and strawberries as plants from a nursery.