CONTAINER GARDENING

If you have limited ability to reach down to the ground to garden, you can use raised planters. If your soil is lava, or is like concrete, you can use any variety of pots. Container gardening will allow you to garden and beautify your yard. You can grow a great variety of vegetables and flowers in pots and there is no end to what can be used.

There are tomato varieties specifically developed for pots but a full-sized tomato plant will produce well in a five-gallon bucket with drainage holes drilled in the bottom. Cucumber and squash can be allowed to trail their vines or put a trellis behind the pot. You can also buy plants that will not vine and produce fruit neatly around the pot. Green beans, chili plants, spinach, and greens of all kinds can be grown easily. If you are planting vegetables such as beets, radishes, carrots, be sure you choose a pot that is 6 to 10 inches deep. The selection on the internet and in catalogs is much more varied than you will get in local stores and the hunt for the best variety is part of the joy of growing. An added bit of information recently added to seed packages is the recommendation for how many vegetable seeds to put in a container.

Companies are aware of the changes in gardening! Traditionally, flowers have been used more often in pots. They can be used to brighten up a patio or the front door area. If you choose a large enough pot, you can drape some plants down the front, fill the center with eye catching colors, and toward the back place something tall and green. It is best to use plants that all like the same conditions. For example: all sunny or shade loving/wet or dry soil.

The soil mixture you use in the containers will need to be a good quality potting mix rather than what is in your garden. If you have a very deep pot, you can add Styrofoam peanuts or similar product that will fill in the space deeper than where the roots will penetrate and keep the pot from becoming excessively heavy. It will also be less expensive to just fill the top 6 to 10 inches of the pot with potting mix and not the whole pot. Some potting mixes have added fertilizer. It will say what kind is added on the bag. Plant will need both a quick and long-acting fertilizer. The quick acting fertilizers provide ingredients for only two weeks while the long-acting ones can last 3 to 6 months. If you use a three-month fertilizer, in August your flowers or tomatoes may slow production of fruit or flowers. A dose of fertilizer can do a lot to revitalize them.

Most plants in pots will need daily watering, if in full sun with temperatures above 90 degrees, maybe twice a day. If you are unable to do this, there are watering systems you can buy. They consist of tubing and emitters to the pots or series of pots and attach to a timer. There are also self-watering planters.

Happy and fruitful gardening!

Edith Iwan is a Cibola-McKinley County Master Gardener who lives and works in Thoreau. As a Master Gardener she assists the County Cooperative Extension Service in providing accurate, research-based gardening information to county residents. If you have any gardening questions, please call the NMSU Cibola County Extension at 505-287-9266 or NMSU McKinley County Extension at 505-863-3432.