mslindz's Vegetable Conainer garden

When I first decided to make a container garden on the balcony, I needed some guidance. I’m fairly inexperienced as a gardener. A few years ago I had help planing and maintaining my first garden and I really enjoyed it, but I didn’t feel I had enough knowledge to go it alone and I knew nothing about gardening in containers. So, wanting to learn as much as I could to be successful (or at least somewhat successful), I went to the library, checked out some books that seemed appropriate, and began learning as much as I could. The one book that intrigued me the most was Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces by Patrica Lanza . After starting to read it, I knew this was how I wanted to do my first container garden. I read up on the different requirements for what I wanted to plant. I wanted to do tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and some herbs.

After I knew what I wanted, my first stop was Jungle Jim’s garden center where I’d seen some good plants for cheap last year. I did manage to find bush cucumbers and patio tomatoes and brought those home with me. I still needed soil makings and wanted to see the herb selection elsewhere before deciding what to buy, so I went to my local gardening center, Natorp’s . I found all the potting things I needed there – organic compost, potting mix, and peat moss for the soil and a variety of pots appropriate for my plants. I also picked up some bell peppers (yellow and red) and lemon balm (not pictured, part of herb container garden).

I did my containers in lasagna layers: started with newspaper on the bottom so nothing leaks out, then organic compost, organic potting mix, organic peat moss and repeated those soil layers ending with compost. I’m trying to keep everything organic or as close as I can get!

I planted everything on May 25, 2008.