Grow your own container garden. Start small and get creative.
You want a garden. You want fresh vegetables, flavorful herbs, and beautiful flowers you grew yourself. But you may think you need lots of land to till up to plant a garden. Or that you need access to a community garden. Any space with access to sunlight has the potential to become your first garden. A DIY container garden is as easy as buying some good soil, choosing a plant, and deciding on a container.
If you want to start gardening, you want to start with a container garden.
Here’s why:
- Inexpensive to start. You might be resistant to gardening because owning land and buying tools, soil, plants, and fertilizer can add up. That’s not to mention to time it takes to dig, plant, water, and harvest. With a container garden, all you need to start is a free container, a small bag of soil-plus-fertilizer, and a single plant.
- Plants can follow the sunlight. As opposed to planting something in the ground, your plants can move with the sun, with your help of course. If the plant you choose needs a lot of sun, you can easily move the container it is in throughout your space.
- Almost anything can be a container. If it can hold soil, you can use it as a container for your DIY container garden. Look around your house and you will find something: a rain boot, a milk carton, a rusty bucket, or some discarded pallet boards. You can make a container garden that is unique and as beautiful as you vegetables, herbs, or flowers you plant in it.
Now, you’ve decided a container garden is the garden for you. It is time to choose the type of garden you want to start.
- Windows: Grow herbs on the windowsill inside your house. Being by a window will guarantee lots of sunlight. Have a window in your kitchen already? It will be easy to pick fresh herbs as you’re cooking. If you have window boxes already installed outside your windows, plant edible flowers or anything with lots of color in a good planter soil. If you don’t have any window boxes, they are simple to build and install.
- Hanging Containers: Just like anything can become a container, almost anything can become a hanging container. Hanging containers give you a vegetables, herbs, and flowers without taking away precious space on your deck or patio. You can string, rope, wire, or fishing line to hang your pot to any hook.
- Deck/Patio Pots: Do you have some empty space in the corner of your deck or patio? Turn that corner into a garden. You can buy a pot at any hardware or garden store in any material or style you want. It will easiest to start and maintain your garden by growing one plant per container.
- Whimsical Pots: How do you build a whimsical pot? Just follow your whimsey! Search all corners of your garage or yard for a bucket or box you can paint, fill with dirt, and start planting. Go to your local thrift store and let your imagination run wild.