Gardening: More on Container Gardening and Growing From Seed

My seedlings are growing into little plants!

We had another cold spell, even had snow flurries! So my little plants have been holed up indoors. But on warm, sunny days they get outside to taste that golden sunshine! The green beans are ready to be trellised! 

I found some resources on container gardening, for those of you who don't have the space for a yard garden. I have a large deck that I will be doing some container gardening on, so I'll be gardening along with ya! 

Container gardening resources:

Texas A&M University: Vegetable gardening in containers
Garden Guides: Guide to container gardening
West Virginia University extension service: Container gardening
Arizona Master Gardener manual: Vegetable garden: Container garden
Virginia Tech extension service: Four keys to successful container gardening

For those who have started seeds indoors along with me, I also found some really cool resources for you at You Grow Girl):

Printable seed-starting chart

Build a do-it-yourself lighting system

Seed-starting instructions

Make your own seed-starting mix

What to do about tall & floppy seedlings



This post is part of a series, click here to find other weekly gardening posts for Spring.

Gardening: Flowers for the House

Photo: Stock Xchng/ me_a

I wish I had taken a photo of the "jungle"! Ha ha!

My sister planted a flower garden last summer. I use the term "garden" very loosely here. =) She did make a garden bed outline, but then she took packets of flower seeds and sprinkled them everywhere!

Fast-forward about a month and she was calling me every day begging me to come chop down her 4-foot tall flower jungle! When I finally went over there and saw the gorgeous, colorful flowers, I told her I would do it if I could keep some flowers. So for a while I had huge, beautiful flowers in glass vases all over my house. I loved it!

So this year I am going to plant (not sprinkle!) a flower garden for the express purpose of growing flowers for cutting and putting in the house. Flowers for this require tall, thick, strong stems.


Luckily, there are lots of beautiful options:

- Zinnias & Asters (This is what my sister grew, and they come in gobs of beautiful colors.)

- Coneflowers (This is where echinacea comes from! I have been growing pink ones for a few years now, but I think they come in a couple of other colors as well.)

- Snapdragons

- Mini sunflowers

- Stock

- Dahlias

- Larkspur

- and of course, Roses (The now-popular "knock-out roses" are easy to grow, grow fast and make lots of flowers, and are not prone to disease and bugs like regular roses!)

The following are pretty and delicate looking, perfect for filling in between the larger cut flowers to make a nice bouquet:

- Black Knight

- Tall Blue Planet (Bonus: attracts butterflies & hummingbirds)

- Butterfly bush (Bonus: attracts butterflies & hummingbirds)

This post is part of a weekly Spring gardening series:

Previous posts in this Spring series, in order:

Getting Ready for Your new Spring Garden

Planning the new Spring Garden & Raised Beds

2 Quick & Easy Indoor Gardening Tricks

Container Gardening & Gardening in Small Spaces

Gardening: Blueberries

We have gone blueberry picking at nearby pick-your-own farms nearly every year since moving to Tennessee. Since I am trying to grow almost all of our own produce this year, blueberries definitely go into the garden. Blueberries are very high in beneficial antioxidents and we eat them plain for snacks, in yogurt, in cereal, and in pancakes. For your sweet tooth they are delicious paired with white chocolate, which I do sometimes in pancakes (by throwing a handful of white chocolate chips into the batter) and in these awesome blueberry white chocolate chip cookies.

It's time to talk about blueberries right now because they like to be planted best when they are dormant, which lasts from about November until March. Here are a few basic facts to know about blueberry plants:

Quick Gardening Notes for the Weekend

{Sorry for the over-exposed, overly-popped photo. I have no excuse except that its night and I quickly snapped one photo. We'll all get over it.}

Two quick things about gardening before we start the weekend, in case you'll be shopping for seeds:

1. KIDS GARDENING - I am going to do a "gardening with the kids" series as well, starting next week. So if you want to get some cutesie kids' seeds, or even just pick out a regular pack or two with the kids, go for it! 

I took Little Bill with me to Home Depot to buy some paint and he saw these kids' gardening mini-kits. I loved that he was into gardening, so I let him pick out three. At 99-cents, its worth it to keep his excitement about starting seeds. They'll need to go in the ground at some point, which means I will make an extra little raised bed for him. It's unnecessary, but I think it will make him feel special and foster pride in his own gardening work, so I figure it'll be worth it, and fun! 

You could make a themed garden with your kids. I've seen a salsa garden with tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, and onions. I've seen a pizza garden with basil, oregano, tomatoes, and maybe bell peppers. And I've seen a salad garden with lettuce (while its cool), cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, carrots, and radishes.

If you don't have yard space, group together a few pots on your patio for your child's own "garden"!

2. ORGANIC VEGGIES - I am happy to say that on said trip to Home Depot, I discovered that they carry Martha Stewart organic seeds for just $1.99 per packet! I shook several and it sounded like there was a good amount of seeds in each as well. I don't really care about the Martha Stewart part, but am happy to see affordable organic seeds that you can just go to the store and buy. Just wanted to let ya know!

Have a great weekend!

Gardening: Small Spaces

In many places in the country now, it is time to start planting seeds indoors! Most seeds like to be planted 6-8 weeks before the last expected frost date, which is mid-February in many areas. (See the first gardening post to find out what the date is for your area.)

If you don't have a yard or a large amount of yard space to garden in, I have good news for you! There are many varieties of veggies created specifically for container growing. These mini plants can produce a fair amount of produce and if you have room for lots of pots, you can grow several of each type of plant. 

In the above photo, you can see the container varieties of tomatoes and bell peppers that I grew last summer. I have done the work for you and found patio varieties on Amazon. You can also visit your local nursery and ask about patio varieties to purchase locally.

TOMATOES:

Container's Choice Tomatoes - They say this plant produces lots of 8 oz. tomatoes.

BELL PEPPERS:

Mini Belles - This plant produces mini bell peppers so if you use them for flavoring, this plant may do for you. If you eat whole peppers or cut into strips for snacks, you'll want a bigger version.

LETTUCE:

Tom Thumb Butterhead Lettuce - Yields little lettuce heads. 

CARROTS:

Little Finger Carrots - These seeds are certified organic, inexpensive, and yield 3-inch carrots.

CORN grows upward, so you can plant a stalk in a small place, but it does need to go in the ground to grow a strong root system that will hold up that thick plant! 

You can grow regular PEAS and GREEN BEANS in a pot with a trellis in it for them to climb up. If if starts to get too tall or out of hand, simply cut off the excess.

You can grow regular STRAWBERRIES in pots.

As far as regular seeds, I love the company Seeds of Change. They are committed to healthy & sustainable seeds and practices. They sell organic seeds and heirloom seeds. The prices for a seed packet averages a few dollars, about double the cheap seeds that you can get at a garden center. But they are high quality and come from a company that is terrific and cares. You also generally get way more seeds in each packet than usual.

It's snowing again here. Brrrrr. Again, doesn't feel like gardening weather, that's for sure! But boy will you be happy that you planted seeds now when Spring comes and you have nice-sized plants to put into the ground! A pack of lots of seeds costs $1 - $4, whereas the plants themselves are $3 - $5 each!

Happy Seeding,

Gardening: 2 Quick and Easy Indoor Tricks

With this crazy cold weather, gardening seems the least likely subject to tackle! So this week I'm going to teach you 2 super-easy & cool indoor tricks I have learned:

1. You can grow your own green onions in a cup of water on your kitchen windowsill, always ready to use! 

As you use green onions from the bunch you bought at the grocery store, cut them where the green turns white at the bottom and put that whole white bottom in a cup or bowl with just enough water to cover the roots. In a day or two the roots will get longer and within a few more days you will have green onions tall enough to start using! 

The longer you wait, the taller the green onions will grow, giving you even more to cook with. Cut what you need right from what you've grown, leaving the bottom in the water and they'll keep on growing again! Just remember to check the water level every few days, and add more as needed.

2. There are several different plants that act as air purifiers in your home. I have always filled my home with such plants, and buy even more when I decide to paint (since paint has toxins). The philodendron (pictured above) is one, and it is beautiful and easy to care for. It requires medium light and moist soil. The really great thing about the philodendron is that once you purchase one plant, you can grow several more with it for free! 

See how there is some of the plant hanging down? This is how the plant grows, so you'll end up with lots of these, like a spider plant. You can cut a piece of one off and put it in a little vase of water. It sill stay bright green, healthy and alive, and eventually grow roots. You can then plant it and grow a whole new plant! 

I just made a new cutting with my philodendron. It took a month to start new roots, but maybe that it because it is winter. Maybe it would grow faster with warmer air and more sunshine? At any rate, I actually love the way the bright green little plant looks in the small vase! Check it out:

Update on my spring gardening: As you can see in the top photo, I have several new little plants that sprouted up from seeds and one got so big that I had to transplant it already (I put it into a Cracker Barrel kids' cup that I poked holes into the bottom of.) 

There are also lots of seeds that didn't sprout, probably because I used old seeds. I will go and buy more seeds and "greenhouses" this week and start those (see the first post about the "greenhouses"). I wanted to keep planting new seeds each week anyway, so that the harvest would be staggered. 

Right now I am growing peas, radishes, spinach, lettuce, bell peppers, corn, and tomatoes, as well as cilantro and peppermint for the kitchen windowsill. I grow the peppermint to put in my iced tea - it is soooo delicious! It tastes like a peppermint snowball, if you know what a snowball is:

Stay warm everyone!

Gardening: Planning the Spring Garden

Photo: Flickr/ Amber Strocel

Last week we talked about getting ready for the Spring garden by finding the last frost date for your area, and choosing which plants you want to grow. This week I am going to talk about the garden beds.

RAISED GARDEN BEDS

The easiest way to start a garden bed is to make a raised bed. They also offer lots of advantages, like getting warmer sooner in Spring, healthy soil without having to amend what you have in your yard, and good drainage. To make a raised bed garden, you:

Get Ready for Your Spring Garden and a New Addition

I garden every year but over the last several months I notice that I spend the bulk of my grocery money in the produce section. Its sad that the healthier you eat, the more money you spend. But let's not digress. It made me want to grow all of our own produce, not just some! So this year, I am going for it.

Of course the least expensive way to garden is to start from seeds. But every year I think it is too soon to start seeds and then before I know it, it is too late. Then I spend a small fortune buying plants that I should have grown myself. Not this year, my friend!

I'm no expert gardener, but I've learned a thing or two over the years that I've been growing veggies and for the last couple of years, I have had so much produce that I had to keep coming up with new things to do with it all, like zucchini cookies and pancakes!