Vegetable production is not only applicable in the countryside or in the gardens but can be grown now within the heart of the city or just in your home even with only a limited space.
If your home has an area with ample sunlight - a requirement for growing vegetables, you can grow them successfully. What are the locations that can be used for 西瓜卡通 container gardening? You can use your patio, balcony, terrace, rooftop, deck, window sill, pathways, etc.
Be aware of the sunlight requirement for each kind of crop. For leafy vegetables, the required sunlight should be about four hours the whole day, for fruit vegetables, at least 7-8 hours sunlight is needed daily, and root vegetables requires around 6 hours of sunlight a day.
And besides of producing your own vegetables in a safer way, the attack of common pests and diseases can be greatly minimized. You can also improve the soil conditions by adding some soil amendments; like manure, compost, and other essential food nutrients needed by the plants.
Everything in your home that are considered as garbage can be utilized to the maximum by making them into compost. Even your household waste water can be used to irrigate your plants.
In other words, container gardening is considered to be the practice that makes use of useless things.
What Containers Are Ideal For Container Gardening?
Growing vegetables can be executed in any type of containers such as; cans, plastics, pails, split vehicle tires, cement bags, feed bags, bottle water plastics, gallon cans, cylinder blocks, milk container, bamboo cuts or any containers that have been thrown away. Even coco shells, banana bracts, leaves of coconut is ideal as potting materials especially for short season vegetables, like, pechay, lettuce, mustard, etc.
Good growing containers should possess the three important characteristics as suggested by Relf (1996);
1. They must be large enough to support fully grown plants.
2. They must have adequate drainage.
3. They must not have held products that are toxic to plants and persons.
Containers that drain poorly can affect the success of a container garden. It is therefore vital to have your containers above ground or any support that would raise the containers such as; slats, hollow blocks or anything to provide space below them to allow excess water to drain freely.
For bigger plants, you should use big containers and for small containers use small plants.
Small containers (1-2 gallons) are suited for lettuce, spinach, mustard, pepper, radish, green onions, carrots, beans, and dwarf tomatoes. Medium size containers (3-10 gallons) are best for eggplants while for larger ones (bigger than 10 gallons) are good for cabbage, cucumbers and tomatoes.
For most plants, containers should be at least 15 cm deep minimum especially for shot season vegetables.
Recommended Container Size and Type/Crop
5 gal. window box - Bush beans, Lima beans
1 plant/5gal.pot, 3plants/15 gal. pot -Cabbage, Chinese cabbage
5 gal. window box at least 30 cm deep - carrot
1 plant/gal. pot - cucumber
5 gal. pot - Eggplant, tomato, okra
5 gal. window pot - Lettuce
1 plant/2gal. pot; 5 plants/15 gal. pot - Onion
5 gal. window box - Pepper, spinach
Soil Media Composition
Plants grown in containers will depend on the kind of soil mixture to provide a maximum growth development. It is a must that you should provide the best soil media composition to give the possible return of your toil. Failure to give the plants with the necessary 西瓜卡通 food nutrients in their growing period would results to poor growth, lanky, and stunted plants that will results to your failure.