What to grow?
Grow what you love to eat. Radishes may be quick and easy, but if you don’t like them, why waste the space? In my family, we like lettuce, spinach, spring onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, okra and corn. All of these, except for okra and corn, can easily be grown in containers. Before heading to the nursery, make a list of those vegetables you love to eat and grow those first. If you have a hankering to try something new, go for it, too. A few years ago, my daughter, Claire, and I discovered we love kale chips, especially homemade ones. The kale we found in the grocery store was large and tough. We began growing ‘Toscano’ or dinosaur kale, and we now have some in raised beds during the cool seasons. Kale, like lettuce, chard and spinach, is easy to grow in containers, and using seed for these leafy crops works well. You can also buy plants if you want to jumpstart the season. We sow kale in late fall, and it often overwinters in our warm climate with cover. We also do an early spring sowing in February.
What about hanging baskets?
Use hanging baskets for trailing plants like strawberries (three plants per basket), along with certain cherry tomatoes like ‘Red Robin’ and ‘Losetto.’ You can even grow runner beans and trailing squash in hanging baskets; their stems will trail down the sides. Fair warning: I wasn’t successful with those trendy containers that grew tomatoes upside down. You might have better luck.
In a hot climate, hanging baskets dry out faster than containers on the ground, so choose those that are solid or are lined with actual moss, not coir. If hanging baskets dry out, your plants will be stunted and may not fruit well.
Deciphering a Seed Packet
(what does all this stuff mean?)
Some seed companies give you more information than others. Two of the best packets on the market are those from Botanical Interests and Renee’s Garden. Both companies offer great seeds, too. Each approaches the seed packet a bit differently, though. Here's BI's approach.
FRONT:
At the top of the package is the plant’s common name: LETTUCE Leaf. Right away, you know you’re growing a romaine or butterhead type of lettuce. Below that is the cultivar or selection name, ‘Red Sails.’ And then the botanical name, Lactuca sativa, not necessary but it certainly doesn’t hurt, either. Read your seed packets, and before long, Latin will be tripping off your tongue. Just kidding. Still, when you grow flowers and ornamental plants, botanical names are very helpful.
What else you’ll see on the front:
At left is the price: $1.89
Amount of seed in the package by weight: 750 mg
Whether the plant is warm or cool season: cool
How many days until maturity: 45
When to sow seed: Early spring through fall. This is where things get tricky. You may be able to do that in New England, but not in the middle south where I live. We get two seasons of lettuce, and that’s all. Even though this information is helpful, always refer to the USDA Zone map online at www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/ and your local Cooperative Extension Office for exactly when you can sow certain seeds.
Description of the plant: Here you learn ‘Red Sails’ is a 1985 All America Selection and that it’s very heat tolerant. Awesome.
There is also a lovely drawing of what the plant should look like, by Donna Clement. I like photographs or drawings, but drawings are a bit more romantic, aren’t they?
BACK:
On the left is a tag you can cut out to attach to a wooden plant stake for I.D., if you like. If you do, cover it with adhesive, waterproof tape. I tend to use plastic markers instead and just write the variety on them; partly because I rarely use the entire package of seeds in one go. However, on this tag, BI lists all kinds of pertinent information like how deep to sow the seeds and when to thin them. They even tell you how far apart to thin your tiny plants.
On the right side, they explain how ‘Red Sails’ grows and that it makes a great patio container variety. This package will plant eight 10-foot rows. That’s a whole lotta lettuce. Note, most people don’t use the entire package, and if they do, lettuce seeds are very small. You usually have to thin them when direct sown. So, unless you use a small-seed planter, like a dial seed sower, you probably won’t get eight 10-foot rows. I think there are better things to do in life than worry about spacing tiny lettuce seeds, but that’s just me.
Below this information, they tell you it is recommended to sow ‘Red Sails’ seeds directly outdoors. Plants often have a preference about how they want to be sown. Some like indoors, or they take too long to grow in one season unless you start them early. On the bottom of the packet you see the sell-by date and when the seed was packed. Don’t stop there, either. Inside the packet is more information about your lettuce.
Check out Renee's seeds, too. And the grandfather of seed companies, Burpee, whose seed packets give all their information in English and Spanish. They also include a zone map showing when plants should be grown in your area.
Confession: It took me a very long time to attempt seeds. I think I feared failure. Don’t let nerves stop you from growing plants from seed. It can be very rewarding to grow an entire plant from something no bigger than a grain of rice. I wish I had possessed the courage to start sooner!
* * *
Way to go!
By combining these tools and techniques from year one, you should be on your way to having yourself a real, live, potted vegetable garden, even if it’s one or two plants. Congratulations – you’re a gardener now!
Chapter Two
Three Seasons of Plenty: Spring, Summer and Fall
This is where you learn how to extend your container garden's growing season well into fall; how to start seeds indoors; how to increase diversity with veggies and herbs, and how to rotate your container crops . . . and how to prepare your container garden for its winter sleep.
HOW WAS YOUR FIRST GROWING SEASON? What were your successes? Did some plants just “up and die?” I know it’s hard, but try to concentrate more on success than failure. We tend to focus on the things we don’t do well, but let those go. Successful gardeners know that some years, no matter what we do, we are unable to grow much. Other years are full of bounty. We learn to go with
