Tight Corners - Growing Plants in Small Spaces

By Thomas Fryd

You can enjoy a garden of colorful flowers or nourishing vegetables even if you only have a small space. With container gardening, you can make a garden in the smallest of apartments. You can choose from a seemingly endless number of styles and colors of containers to hold your plants.

For landscape containers, you can choose a standard old or new flowerpot (large or small), planter boxes, fiberglass tubs, wooden barrels, hanging baskets, concrete planters, and so on. Anything that can hold the soil and plants can potentially work. You are sure to find something to fit your space, both in size and style. The following guidelines will help you get ideas to have a successful container garden.

Know Your Container

Growing plants in pots gives you lots of flexibility. You can move the planters from place to place, into and out of sunlight or humidity.

Cheap plastic pots will become weak if they are exposed to sunlight for extended periods of time. It is best to get pots with UV inhibitors if you want it to be durable.

Not all glazed pots are great for planting, even if they look nice. Pots need drainage holes about inches across to keep the roots from rotting.

Terra Cotta pots are an option. Their potential problems are that they can dry out quickly and they can be quite heavy (if you want to move the plants around a lot).

Wooden containers can add a rustic look, but they can rot over a long period of time. You may think that you should use treated wood to avoid this, but the chemicals can be toxic to the plants. Wood planters can be custom built though, which is a huge advantage to fit your specific needs. Just remember that it won't last forever.

You need to choose a container, no matter what material it's made of, that is large enough to fit the plant or plants that will go in it. The soil cannot dry out too quickly, and the roots need plenty of space to spread out.

To protect against soil loss you should put newspaper, a screen, sphagnum moss, or pebbles at the bottom of the pot. To keep this from plugging the drainage hole, raise up the container on bricks or something similar to allow the pot to drain freely.

Be careful what color pot you choose if you are in a hot area. Dark colors will absorb heat which can burn the roots. If you must have dark colors in a hot climate, be sure to avoid strong sunlight. In general, light colors are best in those climates.

The Soil

When choosing a soil for your container garden, it is important to choose one that can hold enough moisture to keep all of the roots moist, but that also can drain well.

Compost mixed with sand and peat moss works very well in general. You must find out what your specific plants need, though, and make sure the soil contains those nutrients. Soilless potting mix is common in container gardens. It is light, free of diseases and weeds, and can be found at your local garden center. You should add about a tablespoon of lime for a ten inch pot to counteract the acidity of most soils.

Make sure you leave about two inches of space above the soil. You can add mulch in this space to keep moisture in the soil longer.

Sunlight Requirements

Plants need sunlight for energy. Although the amount of light varies based on species, in general your plants need at least 5 hours of direct sunlight daily.

Fertilizing Your Plants

Don't fertilize every time you water because too much fertilizer is bad for your plants. Use a diluted mix of fertilizer every other watering. Check your plants specific needs to know what kind of fertilizer to use.

Watering

Containers will lose moisture fast if they are exposed to a lot of sun and wind. You should water your plants every day. Clay pots can absorb a lot of water, so be careful to make sure your plants are getting enough, but not too much. Adding drip irrigation works very well to make sure the plants are watered completely even in small area landscaping.

What Can Your Container Garden Grow?

Your container garden can grow almost any plant, as long as they will fit in a small space and receive enough light. You can plant things like Lilies, Chrysanthemums, Begonias, Lantanas, Petunias, Zinnias, Marigolds, etc.

Be creative and add some life to your home, no matter how small the available space is!

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