Pick your container gardening idea

Let's start exploring some specific container gardening ideas. The one I'd like to start out with is growing a vegetable container garden on a balcony or small patio. Salad vegetables do real well in containers as long as the container has good drainage and aren't blocked from sunlight. One of the best ways to assure adequate sunlight is to use a stepped or tiered shelving system so that the plants aren't in the shadow of the plants on the shelf above them. Tiered shelving isn't always practical, I've found that well separated wire shelves work great.


Covered patios and balconies are a little more problematic depending on where you live and which direction your the balcony/patio faces. Your container gardening ideas will need to adapt to your particular situation. If your patio's exposure doesn't provide the necessary sunlight for stepped shelves placed against the wall you can always use vertical shelves placed near an outer edge of the patio and aligned in such a way as to minimize shadowing. If plants are shadowed for log periods you can always rotate the containers so the plants share in the sunlight or move the plants that do well in shade into these areas.



Container gardening ideas need to be a little more creative when you have a covered upper level balcony. In this situation I'd use a window box style planter with hooks that you can use to hang the container from the balcony's railing. You can even hang one on either side of the railing to double your garden's size. This serves to highlight that container gardening ideas can be made to fit almost any situation.