Container Gardening

The last time I put in a garden was about 8 years ago. It was only about an 8’ x 8’ square enclosed by chicken wire that I planted with cherry tomatoes, broccoli, eggplant and potatoes. I was only able to harvest tomatoes (bunches of ‘em), a few eggplant and broccoli.

This year, knowing I was going to be moving to a real home instead of an apartment, yet acknowledging that there’s no way I can crawl around on the ground in a real garden, I decided to do container gardening. So last Saturday, I found a bunch of little buckets (a fast-food promotional kid’s meal) at the thrift store. I also purchased potting soil, seed starter soil and plant food.

In tiny seed-starters pots, (12 tiny pots per set) I planted broccoli, lettuce, summer squash, cucumbers, green beans, eggplant, bell peppers and spinach. One week later, I have scrawny little broccoli and lettuce reaching for the sky. Just yesterday two summer squash pushed their way out of the soil. Today a cucumber has appeared. So far no beans, spinach, eggplants or peppers have appeared, making me wonder if I did something wrong.

At the same time that I planted the other things I also planted tomato seeds in six of the kid’s meal buckets. Three days ago about four of the pots were showing signs of life.

If I can manage to keep these alive until I move in four weeks, I’ll have the start of a good garden. I know that I’ll have to probably repot many of them at least twice before I move. Once I get to my new home, I’ll repot them in large containers and have a container garden.

Hopefully by the end of the summer I’ll be harvesting a bunch of my homegrown produce. I’ll dehydrate what I can and possibly even freeze some. Hopefully I’ll grow enough that I can give away or trade. At least I’ll have grown foods that can help hunger survival.