What’s that? You wanna grow stuff in containers?!!?!
Why grow in containers when you have the land to plant, you may be asking. Container gardening has many advantages to in ground planting. Such as apartment living, growing on balconies, extending your season, accessability for those with limited mobility, versatility, and even moving. There’s nothing shittier than getting your garden just the way you like it, thriving and happy.. then having to move. With container gardening, all you have to do is pick up the pots and find a sunny spot at your new home. Some even say it’s easier to collect seeds at the end of the season.
It is most definitely easier to deal with fungus in a container garden, because you can isolate the host plant much more quickly, and dispose of the diseased soil in its entirety.
I’m sure I need not tell you how pretty hanging plants can be. Pretty as well as functional.
You can grow all kinds of things in hanging baskets.. cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, squash.. Your herbs, fruit, or flowers. There are really truly endless possibilities. Just look up “hanging vegetable planter“, or “upside down tomato planter” pictures, and you’ll have tons of inspiration.
How about rain gutters, mounted to the side of your house or fence in a sunny spot, if you don’t have a lot of ground space?
Plus, with a bit of experimentation, you can grow almost anything in pots. Last year I grew corn in pots. Blue corn, no less. It would have been tasty too, if a bear hadn’t charged through the yard and eaten it all the day before I was going to harvest it. 
IT WAS SO PRETTY TOO.
…..I’m clearly still a little pissed about it.
Clay, or terecotta pots / planters are ideal, wood is great, but let’s be 100% honest here. If you have a LOT of stuff to grow, it can get extremely pricey, very very quickly. What you can do is start off with plastic, then slowly as the years progress, switch them out for better (healthier) pots. I have a few black plastic pots in my garden that were left over from my Uncle buying a few fruit trees, and use them for my peppers. Pepper love being warm, and what attracts heat better than something black? Not a whole hell of a lot. If you want your peppers to thrive, place them in a hotspot in your garden. Somewhere with full sun, and a hot ground. Think: does your driveway get so hot, that you try to avoid walking on it barefoot? It might be the perfect pepper place. Make sure it’s not so hot that you’re going to cook your plants, however, and make sure you’re giving them lots and lots of water.
Another route to take, is to use food grade buckets as planters. Just make sure you drill holes in the bottoms for drainage. Don’t forget, planters need to be watered far more often than beds.
Actually, that reminds me. I watched a pretty cool video on youtube about how to link a whole row of bucket planters together through hosing, thus only leaving you with watering one, and the plants watering themselves via wicking the water up from.. well.. here’s the link. It will be less painful for you to watch it, then it will be for you to try to read me trying to explain it.
What kind of gardening do you prefer? Container? Beds? Water gardens? I’d love to know!
