It’s nearly the end of February, which means we’re starting to think about gardens around here. I’m sure we still have quite a bit of cold and snow ahead of us, but it’s been warm and sunny lately, which has me thinking of spring. With a new baby due to arrive in early April, we’re probably going to simplify the garden a bit this year. We’re going to focus on the crops that were the easiest and highest-yielding last year, and skip the ones that seemed to be pest magnets or required a lot of upkeep. We’re going to plant more onions and potatoes than we did last year, since we ran out of them a couple months ago, and since they’re so easy to grow (stick them in the ground and wait until harvest time!) We’ll probably do about the same amount of carrots, tomatoes, and peppers, and not as many beets (we still have beets coming out our ears – luckily they’ve stored well over the winter). In the next week or so we’ll turn over the soil in the beds under our cold frames and get spinach and swiss chard started outside. We’ll be getting our pepper and tomato seedlings going soon too, in the basement. It’s all very exciting after months of looking at a brown backyard.
For those of you who would like to grow more of your own food but don’t think you can because you don’t have enough space, here’s a guest post from Suzanne Staton about container gardening. We have a few dwarf citrus trees growing in containers so that we can move them indoors in the winter – container gardening can be useful even if you have a huge yard!
Gardening is a great way to both supplement the food you buy commercially, which is nice for your budget, and to make sure that you’re eating healthy food grown without pesticides or other chemicals—or at least only the chemicals you decide to put on the plants yourself!
It’s even good for the environment, because instead of big trucks having to transport food to you, burning fuel and polluting the air, you just walk outside and pick it yourself. And plants absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, which is good for the atmosphere. A win on every front!
But what if you don’t have a yard? Container gardening to the rescue!
What is it?
Container garden is a great alternative for apartment dwellers or other people who don’t have yards. It’s also useful if you have certain plants that won’t survive winter temperatures and need to be moved indoors during extreme weather.
With container gardening, instead of planting plants in the ground, you plant them in a vessel of some kind. Containers can be placed outside, such as on a patio or balcony, or inside where the plant can get light, such as by a window.
What can you grow?
Anything you can grow in the ground, you can grow in a container. The main issue is size. The size of the pot will limit the how deep roots can go, so stick to plants that don’t need a deep root system.
Good choices for container gardens are herbs, vegetables and edible flowers. Fruit also works well if the host plant is small, such as strawberries or raspberries. Tree-based plants can be more cumbersome, since they require larger pots, but dwarf varieties exist for some fruits that work well for smaller spaces.
What to use
Any vessel that can tolerate dirt and water without deteriorating and that has drainage will work for container gardening.
Traditional plant pots, hanging baskets and planter boxes are all common holders for plants, but your choice of receptacle is limited only by your imagination. You can use old boots, tea kettles, buckets, and even wheelbarrows and worn-out birdbaths if you have room.
Some materials, such as wood, are more susceptible to rotting than others. For these vessels, it’s a good idea to seal the material and line the container with plastic. And always make sure that any container you use is free of toxic residue.
If the holder you want to use doesn’t have drainage holes, just drill or poke some in the bottom. Then get to gardening!
This guest post was written by Suzanne Staton, author of Laughing Wallet, your online home for frugal living tips. Enjoy life for less, and get your wallet laughing!
Rachael says
Great article! I grew up with very handy parents, they always had, and still have, two huge gardens and very extensive orchard, the harvest of which they then dry and can for winter months. Moving into an apartment left me longing for the feel of dirt and the satisfaction of eating something you grew. I’m ready to try my hand at container gardening, I’m itching for spring and this will be a great start.
Mercedes says
I think my gardening this year is going to be the spouts I’ve just started making. My outdoor living area is about 40sf total, and I tried tomato and pepper plants last year on my porch, but the darn squirrels decided their tummy’s were more important than mine!
I may try to grow a few plants in my upstairs bedroom. It gets great sun and if it fails it’ll only be my fault! not some darn rodent’s!
ada says
My gardening results last year were pretty dismal. Between record heat, pests and fungus, we had a small collection of peppers (frozen and nearly used up), a couple of handfuls of peas and exactly one tiny tomato that the dog enjoyed in one gulp!
Regarding food storage, I had wondered if you set up your hydroponics at your new home and had continued with bulk food buying. We’re off and on bulk food purchasers (should work at being more “ON”), but not really seriously considered growing hydroponically, mainly for space reasons.
FrugalBabe says
Ada,
We used the hydroponic system last spring to get our tomatoes and peppers started – we’ll be setting it up again soon to get this year’s seedlings going. By doing it that way, they’re all about 2 feet tall when we put them outdoors in May – gives us a good head start, and we were able to start harvesting tomatoes by the end of June last year. We don’t keep the hydroponics set up year round here, because we have so much space for a garden now.
We do still buy a lot of food in bulk. Our co-op allows us to order pretty much anything we want in bulk, so I have lots of gallon-size glass jars that I got at a yard sale, and they’re all full of things like dried beans, lentils, rice, etc. We also buy stuff like chia seeds, hemp seeds and dates in bulk, which is MUCH less expensive. I order hemp seeds through Amazon with a program that automatically sends me a new bucket of them every three months. It’s less than half the cost of buying them in little bags at the store. Same with chia seeds – I order those online too, and get 10 lbs at a time. Most of what I buy on a regular basis at the grocery store is fresh produce, which I’m able to reduce considerably during the summer months by using our garden. Good luck with your garden this year!
ada says
FB – Thank you for the reply and for the good garden wishes! Sounds like we’re working similar programs for planting out.
Our local independent health food store is pretty good for some bulk items, but others not so much. I’ll have to investigate online sources and hope to really make a food storage effort this year.
Thank you again, I really enjoy your blog.
slightly normal says
Dear Babe,
About container gardening, check out his website…
http://www.urbanorganicgardener.com/
Ignore the Brooklyn accent. He’s got great instructions for self watering containers, etc. City-oriented but overall very nice.
Meg says
There have been a handful of blogs I follow that are talking about their gardens. I am getting Spring fever.
We had a decent garden last year, but I look forward to this year’s garden. I am planting mainly items that produce in abundance. Zukes, cukes, greenbeans, soybeans, tomatoes and snow peas. I am hoping to buy and plant strawberry plants this year too (do you have strawberries?) I killed the ones I had for the past two years in containers. I didnt give them any fertilizer and not enough water. Oops. This time, they are going in the garden.
Cindy Brick says
Babe, I just got citrus plants in containers this winter. (I live in Colorado.) They are blooming like crazy now; I have a lime and a mandarin orange. Do I need to do anything special to get fruit to form, or will the blossoms just do the job themselves? I read somewhere that they don’t need another plant to pollinate themselves — then I read somewhere else that you need to do it for the blossoms. Help!
How many citrus trees do you have? How much fruit do you get off them? Any special advice? They seem to like our south window exposure, and I water them two times a week. (Spray them lightly other times.) We keep our house pretty cool — 62 degrees — and they don’t seem to mind that, either.
thanks for any advice you can give. I’d hate to lose the benefit of all these blossoms.
FrugalBabe says
Cindy,
I don’t know – we’re at the same point you are. We got our trees last spring (lime, lemon, and orange). We had them outside during the summer, but realized at the end of the season that we had been overwatering them, and they were still pretty scrawny. They’re in our basement under a light now, and growing well, but no fruit yet (lots of blossoms!) We did get one little baby lime starting to grow, but it was on a branch that had to be pruned for the sake of the rest of the tree, so we’re still waiting for fruit number two.
We keep our house at 63, and the basement is much cooler (maybe around 55?), although being under the light helps them a bit with warmth. We’re excited to see how they do this summer, outside, with less water. Good luck with yours!
Karen says
How do you store your potatoes and onions over the winter. My stuff gets soft and sprouts?
FrugalBabe says
Karen,
We only had enough onions to last until about November. I just stored them in boxes in the basement, and they were fine. My parents had a much larger crop, and still have some left. They’ve found that the red onions store very well, whereas the yellow ones have been a bit soft in the middle lately.
We stored potatoes in cardboard boxes in the basement, with newspaper between the layers of potatoes. We ran out about a month ago, and had to start buying potatoes again. Our basement is dry and chilly (we don’t run the heat down there, so it’s in the 50s for most of the winter), and the potatoes did just fine. But again, we only had enough to last partway through the winter.
We’ve had great success storing carrots in garden soil in a giant plastic tub in the garage. We keep the lid sealed all the time unless we’re digging out carrots. We still have lots of them left, and most of the ones I fish out of the container look just like they did when we harvested them in the fall. Same with beets, although we stored them in a lidded container filled with layers of damp peat moss.