New Goals for Self Sustained Living

Way back when I first started blogging, I wrote a post supporting container growing and how it can benefit just about everyone. This is one of my favorite pictures, it shows that even an apartment dweller with very limited space can grow some of their own food. Even if it's just a couple meals a week, that is better than not at all! You can put plants in just about any empty container allowing enough room for the root system of the plant. Things like tomatoes need more room than a bunch of carrots, even garlic and onions can be container grown.

I have personally grown dwarf bananas, tobacco, coffee, cantalopes, tomatoes, carrots, shallots, garlic, radish, cauliflower, lettuce, sweet peppers, cucumber and tons of herbs thru the winter in my kitchen windows.

I have and still use things such as ice cream buckets to grow plants in. anything that will hold dirt and water is fair game here! I prefer 3 and 5 gallon buckets as they are easier to handle, stack well for storage and are just plain easy to get around here. For bigger containers, I like the cattle tubs(big buckets mineral mix for cows come in) as the cattle pastures are full of them. It seems farmers can pack those heavy things out to the field but have a hard time picking up the empties! So, I always ask to get them and no one has ever said no to me. A couple of holes punched along the bottom edge for drainage, we don't want rotted roots, and some compost mix and the plants. Works out pretty good! After a few weeks of good growth, it's time for a little fertilizer. You'll want to keep on top of that, especially if you have heavy feeders such as tomato plants. The more you feed a tomato, the better your harvest. If you think your plants are getting too tall, do just like you would in a regular garden and pinch the top suckers off so the plant bushes out more than it grows up.

Keep an eye on the moisture level and you'll do so well, you'll wonder why you haven't been container gardening all along.

There's plants that have been bred specifically for container growing such as the tom thumb series of tomatoes and peppers but even regular garden varieties will grow in containers. it's harder to control plants such as cherry tomatoes since they vine all over the place so stick with the bush variety of whatever plant you choose to grow and the plant will do much better for you without extra labor intensive attention.

Now, go find a bucket and plant something for those windows!