Easy Ways To Plan Your Container Garden
Tom Johnson
The first thing you need to decide when planning a container garden is whether you'd prefer to grow your plants indoors or outdoors. A lot of people think container gardening is only for indoor growing and patios, but containers can actually be useful for any garden situation.
Containers are great for growing almost any type of plant, because they offer great versatility. If you plant your garden in containers and you need to move it later, it's easy to do it. Not so if you have a traditional garden!
If you're expecting very bad weather, you can temporarily move containers to a safer location, like indoors or into a garage or basement. But there isn't much you can do for a traditional garden.
Likewise if you find the position of your containers is causing your plants distress because of too much shade or sun, you can move them around to find a better location. This is another thing you can't do once you've planted a normal garden.
Putting your container garden outside gives you a number of options. You can pick a spot that gets the right amount of sunlight and at the same time gives you easy access, this will give your plants and you a lot to smile about. The fastest way to lose interest in your garden is to place it in a difficult, hard to reach location!
If you're going to grow edible plants, make sure you locate them as far away as possible from any streets. Traffic pollution will affect not only your plants, but your family too when they eat them.
What about your indoor plants? Choose a good, warm position for your plants, especially if you use air conditioning. Most plants prefer to be warm and a nice spot with filtered sunlight is often best.
If you like your home to be cool, you'll need to put your plants in a room that gets plenty of natural sunlight. If necessary, keep any vents closed to give them the warmth they require.
If you're trying to grow some exotic varieties of plants you'll find they often need either high or low humidity. This will require you to purchase specific equipment that deals with humidity levels, so you need to take this into consideration.
Having said that, you should choose varieties of edible plants that you can't readily get at your local store at cheap prices. When selecting the plants you want to grow, it's better to pick a few of the harder to get ones than trying to grow too many varieties... this just leads to frustration and disappointment.
Stick to growing fruits and vegetables that you really enjoy and have a hard time locating locally, or those you find too expensive or too low quality. Tomatoes are a favorite for home gardeners, because their quality in stores if often very poor.
A final consideration is if you would like your container garden to be organic. Indoors it's fairly easy to do, but outdoors, in an uncontrolled environment, it can be harder to control pests. All you have to do is take some time to learn the best organic methods for your garden and you'll be really happy with the results.
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