Container gardens?

[SedonaSun]

HI all,

I'm curious if any of you have your own gardens at home, specifically container gardens. I'd love to have a huge garden, but the family who lived here before us worked on cars a lot and had lots of oil and transmission fluid and who knows what else on the ground. I'm very leery to plant food in that soil! I tried a mini container garden many years ago--scallions, carrots, etc., but worms ate my tomatoes and our dogs (or climbing rabbits) got to the carrots. And unfortunately the huge containers are more expensive than I can afford--at least in large quantities.

If you do container gardens, what do you use for soil? Pre-packaged stuff from the nursery, mixtures of some sort?

Or is it just easier to let the experts do it and just buy stuff at the grocery? ;)

I'm going to do online research, but am curious as to actual experiences.

[glad_2beme]

I love container gardening - I get flower pots of all sizes at flea markets yard sales - heck people even throw them out beside the road....I have used organic soil from nursery and I also have gotten soil road side from the country. I don't seem to have bug problems (knock on wood), and I dont have animals yet....I had grape tomatoes in hanging pots this past year.

[SamL]

I want to expand my pot garden, I use organic soil from a nursery, mainly herbs.

[Ireland]

as in....? Ha That came out kinda funny. Yeah, I'd love to do some container gardening myself. I guess that way you would be absolutly sure of what's going into your plants. I wish I had a sun room, I'd love to do herbs year round. Perhaps one day..*wistful sigh*

[glad_2beme]

lights under my counter do great for small herbs on the kitchen counter, and in one house we had - I put an open shelf in front of the window - - just a couple of ideas

[sweetgoddess]

You can grow anything you want in containers--but you can also make raised beds with 2x4's etc, and either build a bottom or even less expensive, line the ground underneath with anything-newspaper, plastic etc. Then fill to the top of boards with compost/soil and there you go--weedless garden.
There's a plant called dog-be-gone that is a natural dog repellent...you could also attach chicken wire to the raised beds....or cover them.

[levamssg]

Hi - here is a site that talks about container gardening. It may be helpful.
We are going to try container gardening this year. I purchased an earthbox to give that a try. Plus, we use heaps of 5-gal buckets of paint, so am saving those and will plant tomatoes or whatever in those as well.

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

cheers
terry

[golfngardennut]

This is my favorite web place to find out info about gardening, there are many forums, one of which is container gardening... there is also organic gardening, hydroponics, growing under lights, etc. Check out hypertufa if you want to try your hand at making your own pots!

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/

Enjoy the site...

Pat

[Joopie]

I just got back from an appointment at a coffeeshop that has a lot of magazines, and there was a Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication magazine strictly on container gardening. It will probably be available all month. The title is Container Gardening and the words are in green and blue. Right by the price it says: Visit Garden Shed Online- http://www.bhg.com/gardenshed.

I'm not sure how much about organic gardening they have in there, but you could probably adapt any organic gardening principles to the container garden ideas in the magazine. I bought it and it looks pretty good- it was about 7 bucks.

Hope that helps!
Julie