Carol Dee
Garden Master
John, 
As you already know this is a great place for all kinds of helpful and friendly folks. 
As you already know this is a great place for all kinds of helpful and friendly folks. 
Vegetable Container Garden
- Thread starter johnkaz20
- Start date
digitS'
Garden Master
Yes, but we do have our quirky natures, John. The very best we can do is relate our experiences, in our locations.
You have a gardener there in the LA area who made a major commitment to growing lettuce in rain gutters in 2011. I encouraged her because of my experience with potted plants in a greenhouse. The gutters, mounted on an interior wall of a greenhouse, were attached so that watering was real easy for us - just a matter of allowing water to flow in at the top and after it began to flow out the bottom, we shut it off.
The gardener was enthusiastic and committed. After she had remodeled an exterior wall of her home with these gutters - we never heard from her again . . . :/. And, this was after she had promised pictures "when it is green and growing." This left one to wonder if the set-up ever made it to that stage.
Keeping the plants watered is the real challenge for container growing.
Steve
You have a gardener there in the LA area who made a major commitment to growing lettuce in rain gutters in 2011. I encouraged her because of my experience with potted plants in a greenhouse. The gutters, mounted on an interior wall of a greenhouse, were attached so that watering was real easy for us - just a matter of allowing water to flow in at the top and after it began to flow out the bottom, we shut it off.
The gardener was enthusiastic and committed. After she had remodeled an exterior wall of her home with these gutters - we never heard from her again . . . :/. And, this was after she had promised pictures "when it is green and growing." This left one to wonder if the set-up ever made it to that stage.
Keeping the plants watered is the real challenge for container growing.
Steve
Stubbornhillfarm
Attractive To Bees
John! You have been given some great advice here. In my opinion, much of gardening is "on the job trainning" and "trial and error". You will take a lot of pride in what you are able to grow. If something doesn't work out; really try to figure out why it did not and if you can make changes, try it again when the time comes. If you can't make the neccessary changes, then just move on. There are so many different things a person can grow and gain satisfaction from them!
desertlady
Attractive To Bees
How do you keep your chickens away from your plants?? My chickens will eat them to the ground !!!SuperChemicalGirl said:
SuperChemicalGirl
Attractive To Bees
No idea... they just don't pay any attention to them unless they have veggies on them, and then I'm in trouble. My tomatoes and pumpkins really suffered at the beaks last year. I have a fence around some of my garden this year so that helps. But for some reason my herd of chickens (somewhere around 70 birds) won't bother my plants unless the actual veggies are within easy reach.desertlady said:
desertlady
Attractive To Bees
Mine will EAT up the plants !!SuperChemicalGirl said:
bluelacedredhead
Chillin' In The Garden
I'm having a terrible year with predators in the garden. The slugs, snails, pillbugs, wild birds and squirrels have destroyed several pepper plants, probably 6 tomato seedlings, 2 plantings of pumpkins (total 12 plants), all of my lettuce and spinach and eaten most of my strawberries.
The only plants that have survived major onslaught are those I planted in containers and have placed for the most part on our back deck. Although this morning, something (a furry something I am sure) had dug right to the bottom of a 2 gallon container of Dark Opal Basi. Although they didn't kill all of the basil, they buried a lot of it so I had to carefully sift through the potting soil to upright the plants again.
Even on the farm, I grew eggplants in containers because in a short season climate that was the only was to ensure that the fruit matured. Sometimes I grew tomatoes and peppers in containers for ease of isolation distance to save seeds.
I water the ones in full sun every day unless we've had a good rain within a 24 hour period. But you have to make sure that the container has good drainage or you can overwater and drown the roots.
I love the pics!! There are some creative gardeners on this forum. Thanks for sharing.
The only plants that have survived major onslaught are those I planted in containers and have placed for the most part on our back deck. Although this morning, something (a furry something I am sure) had dug right to the bottom of a 2 gallon container of Dark Opal Basi. Although they didn't kill all of the basil, they buried a lot of it so I had to carefully sift through the potting soil to upright the plants again.
Even on the farm, I grew eggplants in containers because in a short season climate that was the only was to ensure that the fruit matured. Sometimes I grew tomatoes and peppers in containers for ease of isolation distance to save seeds.
I water the ones in full sun every day unless we've had a good rain within a 24 hour period. But you have to make sure that the container has good drainage or you can overwater and drown the roots.
I love the pics!! There are some creative gardeners on this forum. Thanks for sharing.
