How To: Start A Container Garden

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Food prices are rising just as our paychecks are shrinking, and the food we can afford is often tainted with a host of exotic toxins. It’s a nasty scenario that has many people taking food matters into their own hands. You don’t need a 40-acre spread to join this growing growing trend.

It’s called “container gardening,” and it lets anyone with a few feet of sunny floor space, some soil and a few spare containers grow everything from tomatoes and carrots to onions and eggplants — all of it basically cost- (and salmonella-) free! It’s easier than you’d think, especially if you follow AM’s how-to guide.



What you’ll need





Containers

When choosing what kinds of containers to use, consider your budget, what you’ll be growing and where you’ll be growing it. Shallow rooting crops like onions or herbs need small containers in the 6- to 10-inch range. But succulent vegetables like tomatoes and peppers send out long, thirsty roots that necessitate at least a five-gallon container — approximately the size of an office water cooler bottle.

Plastic containers are the cheapest. Wood containers can contain preservatives like creosote that leech into your soil and turn healthy crops into chemical-saturated death bombs, while ceramic pots are the best, and most expensive, by far.

Ensure that whatever containers you choose offer appropriate drainage. If there are no drainage holes, layer two inches of clean gravel along the bottom. Without adequate drainage, your crops will die a slow death as the soil becomes waterlogged and the roots drown in a layer of anaerobic muck.







Growing mediums

Your soil needs to drain properly and retain enough moisture to feed the plants. Use potting soil mixed with “synthetic” material like sawdust or wood chips. Some gardeners will bake their soil in the oven for an hour to kill bacteria or fungus, and fill their apartments with the earthy aroma of cooked dirt. If you buy bags of potting soil there’s no need to bake it. Fill your containers with dirt to 2 to 3 inches below the brim to allow for watering.

Space

What you can grow, and how much of it, will be determined by how much space you can devote. Map out your growing areas before you buy containers. Hanging baskets and window boxes can turn dead space into productive space for herbs and small pots in a snap. Most vegetables need at least five hours of direct sun a day. If your dungeon-like condo won’t allow this, consider leafy crops like cabbage, which are more shade tolerant than sun-gluttons like tomatoes or cucumbers.

Learn how to start a container garden and save money on salad...