Creating a container garden is a great way to take advantage and use patio, deck or balcony space. It’s also an excellent way for those with no outdoor yard or garden space to have a beautiful garden.
Many people living in an apartment in the city for instance, create container gardens on their balcony or patio area – sometimes called patioscaping.
Some even create them using window boxes which are attached to the outside of the building just under their windows. Learn about window box liners here.
Small space gardening in containers is fun to create for indoor areas too, using a wide variety of houseplants and flowers that will spruce up your home.
In fact, almost any plant or flower can be grown in a container.
Plants which grow quite large will need larger containers of course, and if you start bushes, shrubs or trees in a container you’ll eventually need to transplant them outside in the ground unless they are miniature varieties.
Some of the most popular types of container gardens include:
- Herb gardens in the kitchen or morning room;
- Annuals or perennials on the patio or inside the home;
- Vegetable gardens on the patio, balcony or deck;
- And even specialty gardens such as container salad gardens or salsa garden.
- Even a single specimen of the colorful Cordyline plant or flowering Desert Rose Adenium can create impact
- Some plants help with filtering air making them beautiful plants for hanging baskets and containers
- Container garden for indoor plants requiring partial shade
Most people have their first experience with container gardens when they buy a beautiful, lush arrangement of flowers or greenery at the store. These are usually filled to the brim with new flower blooms, trailing plants or trailing vines for containers that cascade over the side of the container.
Buyer Beware of Full Containers of Bloomers
Unfortunately a lot of people find themselves with dead plants just a few weeks after having bought the beautiful arrangement, and they’re at a loss as to why the plants didn’t live.
The answer is simple though. When you buy a ready made container garden at the store which is packed full of blooms and greenery, the container is usually too full for the container plants to have the room they need to grow, live, and thrive. It’s always a good idea to use a recipe when planting a container garden.
Related: Patioscaping – Turn Patios Into An Instant Garden
To keep container garden plants alive for long periods of time, you must make sure they have enough room for their roots. Some plants have much larger or longer root balls than others too, so those plants will require larger containers in order to continue growing successfully.
If you really like the way a ready made container garden looks, you can take steps to keep it alive and beautiful in your home.
Steps for a Long Life
When you buy the garden, simply buy a new, large container with potting soil or potting mix to transfer the garden to – think of it as basically repotting a plant.
When you get home, remove the plants from their original container and place them into the new one with well-drained soil. Make sure the pots have drainage holes to avoid over watering.
You may have to separate the plants a bit if they’re all tangled together, but generally you can keep the arrangement looking very similar to the way it was when you bought it.
The larger container will give the plants more room for their roots to spread and grow, so your new garden will continue looking lovely for a very long time.
Apply a slow-release fertilizer or water-soluble fertilizer to help your flowering plants grow faster. Avoid applying too much in the pots as you may end up having many leaves and no blooms at all.
As the plants continue growing though of course, you may need to occasionally transfer them to another, even larger pot. Alternatively you can separate out some of the plants into smaller containers, and you’ll have multiple container gardens instead of just one.
Related: Rules in Using Vines And Windows Boxes
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