Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Container Gardens for Urbanites

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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Container gardens are perfect for urbanites and often well suited for those with more abundant space. Many people just can’t resist rooting cuttings from favorite plants or perhaps sticking three tooth picks into an avocado seed for support and suspending the large seed, one end immersed, in a jar of water.  I’ve known so many apartment kitchens with avocado trees in various stages of growth, all a response from those who love to nurture and grow albeit the windowsill. Guacamole? Why of course. 

Container gardens

What are container gardens? Like the mustard seed, from small beginnings gardens grow. Successful urban gardening isn’t strictly defined by spaciousness. Always creative, gardeners find ways in the most unlikely places to cultivate fresh herbs, nutritious salads and many other plants more commonly grown somewhere thousands of miles and a continent away. Maybe this is you. Let’s start with the container.

Everyone

Everyone is familiar with the common flower pot. Too often our thinking ends right there. Pause, breath deep, relax. Growth is natural and like a spiral, usually progresses upwards, sometimes slips back, then moves forward and upward to reach a goal. A good pot has a wide brim, isn’t too heavy to move, and includes enough room for roots, soil or media, and the ability to allow moisture to perculate through the media. We attempt to create a replica of an outdoor garden or environment suitable for your particular plants. There is a wide spectrum of specific needs for each plant, ranging from nearly dry cactus to floating water hyacinth in the aquarium. Somewhere in between, indoors or out, urban gardeners achieve good results with container gardens. 

Clean your pots

Clean your pots. Indulge yourself, red clay pots are classic standards for very good reasons. They are affordable in many sizes, and yes, the red is pleasing. Do you desire more panache? City and country folk have grown plants in containers for thousands of years, many are works of art. Excellent examples from past generations survive at little more cost, well sometimes much more, than common red clay pots. Suit yourself. Red clay pots are quick and easy to paint. Children enjoy a chance to participate, involve a child. Paint brush in hand, drop cloth for spills and a chance to always have it right are good combinations. Moreover, a potted plant for a child to tend is another mustard seed, easy to care for and not a tragic loss if interests wane.  Have fun and push the envelope, every garden reflects the gardener’s personality. A good pot will endure for many years, keep empty pots clean, stored upside down, do take care to not over stack or insert mishmash sizes together just because they’re cheap or time is too tight. 

Smaller pots

Smaller pots require more observation, never a challenge for gardeners and those I have in the house next to the kitchen sink seem to flourish most. My personal feeling is the plants enjoy the company and likelihood of being watered more often. This is where I keep orchids and African violets, both a bit fussy, each charming, neither ever a bore. 

Keep a saucer

Always keep a saucer or pan under pots, if you have a pot without a drainage hole, it’s a pot intended to have a smaller pot inserted. Save your broken clay pot shards. Use pieces of broken pots as permeable covers for the drainage hole, this is the first step in planting into a pot, regardless of size or purpose. A saucer under a potted plant is best if it has at least the depth of a pie plate, many plants absorb moisture well from bottom upwards. I cover the growing medium with seashells found beachcombing, marbles, or pebbles are fine. This mini mulch slows evaporation in dry households and reduces splashing when watering. It’s only a matter of time for someone to overfill a watering jar and pour too much water too fast. Worst case is to erode soil from the roots and the least is to clean up the floorboards, walls, and discourage one. 

Elementary

Elementary? The principles that keep your spider plant clambering up and beyond are the same as for the larger container that has a tomato plant on the porch or deck. Entire industries have grown up around the horticultural needs of urban gardeners. Most essentials can be easily made in the backyard but if you are in a high rise building, buying potting soil is affordable. The best news is that potting soil doesn’t go bad, has a long life span and is in easy to handle sizes. I gardened in a community garden in an old densely built neighborhood, indeed the garden grew up in an abandoned lot left from a house fire. Gardeners often arrived, year after year, with bags of potting soil in the baskets of their bicycles. Over time, the garden’s store bought soil deepened and renewed again and again became very fertile. 

Fun to do

Mixing potting soil is fun to do, a sack of perlite, a form of glass with numerous scores and pockets that holds moisture goes a long way. Perlite is indestructible and chemically inert. A bag goes a long way, peat moss, of equally versatile application, is part of any gardener’s repertoire. Compost or good topsoil mixed in equal parts with perlite and peat moss creates a fine planting mixture capable of holding water through dry spells during vacation or long weekends, and is fun for small hands to mix together with large spoons or trowels. 

Gold mines

Our cities are gold mines of bits and pieces of useful free materials: boards, plastic five gallon buckets, packing crates, old windows and doors. A hammer and nails or a portable drill and screws easily fashions planting boxes. Studies show organically grown fruits and vegetables contain between 10% and 50% more antioxidants than more conventionally grown produce. Moreover, perhaps the most neglected aspect of non-organic produce is flavor. The complex nature of biologically rich soils translates into robust flavors simply unavailable in foods grown in soils laden with N-P-K fertilizers and herb & insecticides. The jury may still be out as far as genetically modified staples that contain broad spectrum nicotinoids that poison insects harmful and beneficial. Containers allow cultivation of food plants grown in biologically rich soils and varieties with more robust quantities of carontenoids and flavonoids, all powerful antioxidants known to be hostile to cancerous cells. Consider carefully favorite or be more venturesome and seek new plants with rich colors, such as purple kales, beets, the red, black and purple carrots, blue potatoes, all evidence of superb sources of nutrition. 

Much more

Containers can produce much more than one might assume. Leafy spring greens such as the many lettuces, especially those with deeply colored foliage grow well in containers. They do not tolerate hot weather, generally in my zone 6 garden after the beginning of June. Till in the remainder of harvested plants and plant again, this time with cucumbers or a favorite, scarlet runner beans. Both suggestions require vertical support or for that matter, may cascade from well watered hanging containers. Scan seed catalogs for vegetables and fruits especially bred for containers or keep an eye out for versatility. Gardeners have grown French horticultural pole beans for generations, sometimes known as scarlet runner beans. Not only do they meet the demanding French palette, scarlet runner beans are vigorous, and bloom in sequence offering a summer long harvest of delicious 8-10 inch beans. The hidden bonus? They are covered in lovely flowers in a pure red and newer types now offer apricot and bi-color red and white blooms. Hummingbirds, the magicians in the garden are attracted to bright colors and will visit your scarlet runner pole beans all season. 

Hope and joyful

Whether you have a flower pot bursting with hope and joyful growth or a collaboration of do it yourself containers in a galaxy of personally selected colors and crafted shapes, urban gardeners have the potential to grow an abundance of herbs, flowers, and vegetables. Got a place to shelter large pots? Dwarf fruits will perform very well, indeed peaches grown in large pots are elegant and beautiful. Provide the typical sunshine requirements for each species, water as needed, in short, care and love your plants. This is a relationship without unkind words, complaint or disloyalty. Surely these are flavors suitable for every taste. Bon chance!

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.

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