Container Gardening: What we learned this year...

We have a standard back yard. It is not over-sized whatsoever. Most of the back yard is now mulch. With three dogs a green lawn slipped from a realistic possibility. However, to utilize and maximize our space we discovered container gardening. I took a free container gardening class at O'Tools and it inspired me to seek alternatives for our limited space.

We primarily use whiskey barrels or similarly sized wood containers. They are high enough that the dogs can't disturb the plants and deep enough for roots of most garden plants. For veggies that do not require a large root system, for example lettuce, we place empty plastic containers at the bottom of our whiskey barrels. This allows us to use less soil and also keep the containers lite so that we can move them if necessary.

Many small plants including peppers can use regular sized pots. Remember plastic posts can retain more moisture than the standard terracotta pots. We, pretty much, will use every pot that we have for herbs, peppers, lettuce and even yellow squash. Our cucumbers did quite well with a whiskey barrel and a trellis. They climbed nearly 4 feet high during the summer!

We use Topsy Turveys for our tomato plants, where they will grow up side down. The trick is to use a very light soil with peat moss and water frequently. We had 8 tomato plants hanging off the deck, really utilizing our vertical space!

But with most containers it didn't matter how heavy or lite the soil was as long as they had periodic organic fertilizer, water and sunshine.