Containers an efficient, easy way to garden

Gardening in containers filled with all kinds of colorful and unique plants is one of the hottest trends in gardening right now.

And for good reason.

Container gardening is an efficient use of time and space. You can take care of a whole deck full of pots and hanging baskets in far less time than it usually takes to get the tools out of the garage.

A trowel, a hose and cutting shears are all the tools you really need.

Container gardening brings the garden to the gardener. This means people who are not able to garden traditionally can still reap the benefit of working with plants.

Lastly, you don’t need a lot of gardening knowledge or experience to be successful.

Sound like something you’d like to try?

Start by evaluating the spaces where you could set containers or hang pots. Is the space predominantly sunny or shady? What part of the day does the sun or shade hit the space? In many cases, shady places are actually better than hot, sunny ones. Pick your plants accordingly.

The spot should be close to your usual line of travel during the day so you can enjoy the beauty and give a pot some attention or water in a quick moment. The new recoiling hoses now on the market make any faucet close to your pots an easy source of water.

With hanging pots, make sure there are sturdy places to set hooks and brackets. When these pots are fully planted, they can be very heavy.

Almost anything that will hold potting soil can be used as a container. Traditional ceramic, clay and plastic pots; wooden or metal boxes of all shapes and sizes; found items like old pots, pans, and castoff items; moss-lined baskets and even old boots can be used to show off the plants.

Each has advantages and disadvantages. Nonporous materials will hold moisture better than porous ones. Thin materials can transfer more heat than thick materials and may result in overheated plants. Others are lighter and easier to move around or hang. Some specially designed hanging pots even come with holes on the bottom so you can insert small plants to round out the hanging container.

The container can be any size. Loraine Fairrington and her friend Dee Peck, owner of the Secret Garden Greenhouse, prefer to use 12-inch and larger hanging baskets. On the other hand, Debbie Stanea, manager at Liberty Park Florist and Greenhouse, likes to use almost any size container. All of these veteran planters say that, in general, the smaller the container, the more often you will have to water it.

Picking the plants for your containers is the best part of the project. Gardeners today are experimenting with all kinds of plants. Ornamental grasses, perennials, tropical plants used as annuals and many others have joined the petunia, lobelia and hanging geranium to make colorful and striking arrangements.

Breeders have been busy developing new varieties of plants with black, chartreuse, orange and multicolored leaves as well as flowers. Tropical plants like canna, caladium and coleus, all with very bold and colorful leaves, are finding their way into container plantings.

Fairrington has a straightforward approach to caring for her pots. “Trim them when needed, water once or twice a day and fertilize them once a week.” As the plants grow in the summer, they can sometimes get leggy and a bit rangy. “Just give it a haircut if it is looking gangly. They will fill back out quickly.”

Mix a time-release fertilizer like Osmacote into the soil before you plant. Both Fairrington and Stanea add a diluted fertilizer mix to each watering. They recommend that the gardener continue feeding the plants once a week with a 25 percent fertilizer mix high in phosphorous (the second number on the N-P-K numbers).

Containers and hanging pots should be watered at least once a day and more during our hottest weather. “Once the flowers go down (wilt), they aren’t likely to recover and come back,” says Fairrington.

You can increase the soil’s water-holding capacity by adding special polymer crystals to the soil at planting. The polymers can hold up to 40 times their volume in water and release it back to the plant slowly. They are sold under trade names like Terra-Sorb.

How successful have these experts been with their container gardens? Fairrington said that last year her hanging container of Million Bell petunias got so big that a robin thought it was a good place to build a nest. “I had to be very careful when I watered so I didn’t bother the babies.”