Container gardening is a viable way to grow your own.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about food security and eating local produce. I've written about it, as have many others, and not just in Atlantic Canada - there's plenty of discussion about such concerns no matter what province, or country, you call home. And while I don't have empirical evidence, the chatter from fellow gardeners is that more people are planting a bit of a kitchen garden.

Sure, there are hard-core vegetable gardeners who pounce on seed catalogues, only to look at the latest and greatest tomatoes, carrots, beets, and sweet corn, but many people are intimidated by the thought of tending a huge vegetable patch. Maybe you don't have the room for a potager, or the time or physical ability to tend it. But you can still have tender greens, flavourful tomatoes, and many other vegetables without having a huge plot to tend. The answer is containers.

Greg Wingate owns Mapple Farm in Weldon, NB, a certified organic seed company specializing in unusual veggies, including short-season sweet potatoes. "It just doesn't get more local or intimate than growing some of your own food," he says. "It satisfies on so many levels. You're the one in control of what you use and how you grow. The choice of what to start from seed vastly dwarfs what's available from stores or what's pre-potted at most garden centres. You can use ingredients not generally available, so what you eat and feed others is custom-made. And once you learn what a difference that can make, you'll never again rely exclusively on off-the-rack food."

At the Garden of Eatin' Farms in Paradise, NS, Lynn Cornish and her husband Stephen grow a wide selection of transplants for home gardeners. Lynn has noticed an upswing in container-gardening interest in recent years, not only to do with space. "You can have more control over growing conditions, because you can move the containers to different sites in your yard," she says. "Containers also allow for earlier starts of long-season crops like peppers or eggplants." Lynn says seniors are planting a few vegetables in containers. "They want the fresh veggies but don't need zillions of tomatoes or cucumbers," and also don't want, or aren't able, to do all the work of preparing and tending a vegetable garden. For families with young children, container gardening is a great way to cultivate the kids' green thumbs, and they'll learn more about where food comes from and appreciate the benefits of local food production.

There are guidelines to successful container-vegetable garden. If your only available site is a north-facing balcony or porch, it will be a challenge to provide enough light. Most vegetable crops, herbs and fruits require at least six hours of sunlight a day, although salad crops and root vegetables that prefer cooler temperatures can tolerate partial shade.

There are many container options. You might like to use large, ornate planters for tall crops such as vining tomatoes or cucumbers, or for dwarf fruit trees or shrubs. Select containers that are durable and have drainage holes in the bottom. Don't use wooden containers that have been treated with penta, creosote or other toxic preservatives: toxins can leach into the soil and be taken up by vegetable roots.

Perhaps the simplest container-grown vegetable plot I have seen was at Sonia Collis' Thyme and Place Nursery in Wallace Ridge, NS. Last summer, Collis grew a variety of vegetables - tomatoes and greens, primarily - in bags of soil in her greenhouse. She simply planted directly into the bags of premium potting soil and generic-label "black earth." (Plants in the premium soil outperformed plants in the generic version.)

If you want to go this route, there are a few tips for success. "Warm the soil up before you sow seeds, to help kick-start germination," Collis says, adding that bringing bagged soil indoors for a few days will do the trick. She recommends getting seeds going as soon as possible in the spring, and suggests choosing crops that you can enjoy as they ripen, such as strawberries, zucchini, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and peppers. Plant directly into the bag by cutting a small X to plant into (whether a seed or a transplant), which will help hold in moisture and warmth. "The success lies in water, water, and more water, with good drainage," Collis says. "Keep the top opening as small as possible to reduce evaporation, and look for good-quality soil. It pays dividends in plant growth and crop results."

Soil from the garden usually isn't recommended, because that soil is heavier than commercial potting mixes and may contain pathogens. Sterile seeding mixes are all right for starting seeds, but contain no nutrients and are too lightweight to support the roots of larger plants such as tomatoes or cucumbers. Your best bet is to either purchase good-quality bagged soil that has compost mixed in, or make your own using equal measures of peat, perlite or vermiculite, builders' sand, and finished, good-quality compost. Adding some slow-release organic or conventional fertilizer to the mixture will help feed your growing vegetables.

If you're a tomato lover, you will likely want several types of tomatoes, perhaps a patio or cherry type for salads, and a larger variety for slicing or canning. Salad fans will want to seed veggies like mesclun-mixed greens, radish, small carrots, and cucumbers, while others may be interested only in planting a few herbs for use in cooking. Lynn Cornish recommends most of the miniature or "baby" vegetables: miniature eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, and beets all work well in containers.

Greg Wingate carries Orchard Baby corn, a strain that grows only waist-high and produces miniature cobs of sweet corn in 65 days. While it would take quite a few to make a corn boil, it's a fun plant to grow on a patio or in a small garden, and it's an unusual, heirloom variety. One of the most popular seeds Wingate grows is the super-early Latah tomato, which gardeners with short seasons can successfully ripen, even if they live in Labrador or Scotts Bay, NS. An unusual but gourmet plant is chufa nuts, also known as tiger nuts or earth almonds. This sedge (related to grasses and papyrus) produces small pea-sized tubers that grow along the roots. Chufa nuts are rich in minerals and mostly unsaturated fatty acids, and are gluten and cholesterol-free. 

When transplanting, it's always best to move plants into the largest, final container after a time spent in smaller containers. "Plants seem to be intimidated if they have to fill up a huge pot, and are delayed in getting up to speed," Cornish says. It's also easy to overwater small seedlings in large pots, and excess moisture will drown roots and kill plants. If you're using very large pots, you don't have to fill them completely with soil; Cornish puts recycled Styrofoam packing material in the bottom of the container before adding soil. This uses less soil, the drainage will be excellent, and the containers are not nearly so heavy to move. Smaller pots upside-down in the planter also serve a similar purpose, but make sure you have six to eight inches of soil in the planter, to ensure good root growth.

Because container-grown plants are completely dependent on gardeners, you will have to fertilize regularly and water frequently, even daily in hot weather, in order to provide plants with sufficient moisture and nutrients. But you'll enjoy the payoff when you dine on your own fresh produce.

ContainerHerbs

Some culinary herbs do well in good-sized containers and pots, although there are a few points to consider. Marilyn and Howard Erb of Cambridge Narrows, NB, operate H. Erb's Herbs, an organic herb operation, and while most of their herbs are in demonstration or production plots, they have some customers who want to grow herbs in containers. "Most herbs have deep roots and rootlets that require deeper containers than you might use for vegetables," Marilyn says. She also recommends using well-drained garden soil for herb containers rather than commercial potting mixes. Use a very light hand with fertilizing, because overfeeding can result in plants that get too leggy and less potent, and while you'll want to water regularly, make sure that the containers are well drained. Herbs that do well in containers: basil, parsley, mints, chives, rosemary, dwarf dill, sweet fennel, lemon verbena bay laurel and scented geraniums.