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Article By: SarahDuke
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Container Gardening: The Benefits are Hard to Beat
Container gardening is a great way to make the most of the limited space you have. If you live in a home with a tiny yard or even an apartment, it can be hard to find a place for a garden. Containers allow you to have a garden on your patio, on the porch, or even inside of your home.
Some people have these gardens in their sunroom, in the kitchen window, or even in the window of a spare bedroom. Others utilize a closet space to grow plants by using a grow light.
Another major benefit of container gardening is the ability to move plants if you need to. If you're growing your plants outdoors and bad weather comes, you can bring your plants inside where they'll be safe. If your plants are getting too little sun or too much, you can easily move their containers to a better location. And you can even move your plants on a whim if you decide they'd look better elsewhere.
Plants grown in containers don't contract diseases as easily compared to plants grown directly in the soil. It's true that plants grown in containers can still become infected with diseases, but you will find the probability is much less than if you had grown them in your landscape. Potting soil is generally free of disease-causing organisms, so your plants will be safer.
Plants grown in containers are easier to keep well fed. When your plants are potted, the fertilizers applied will surely get into your plants. The problem with fertilizing plants grown in the ground is that a lot of the fertilizer is lost to drainage or used by nearby plants. You are less likely to have this problem with container grown plants.
You do have to remember that because there is less soil, the fertilizer may drain out much faster. So you need to remember that the frequency of fertilizing will be increased as opposed to what you would do in a landscape. But on the plus side, plants will be able to use more of the fertilizer you apply because it is less likely to wash away.
When you grow your plants in containers, you'll also be able to extend their growing season. By carefully insulating pots by wrapping them in blankets or other insulating materials, you can keep their soil warmer than the ground soil. You can start your plants early indoors or in a cold frame, then you can easily move them to larger pots outdoors when the time is right.
After the first frost, you container garden can continue to grow by applying careful insulation and bringing them indoors when it becomes too cold.
Another advantage to container gardening is that it increases the accessibility of the hobby. For persons with physical disabilities and impairments, using containers allows them to enjoy and tend to plants in convenient locations. If a person uses a wheelchair, they can put the pots on a short table to make them easier to tend to. Elderly gardeners who are finding it more difficult to enjoy typical landscape gardening will find that container gardening offers the same joys but with less work.
Even small children find container gardening to be fun and easy, since they don't have to have someone till the soil and there isn't raking, weeding, and hoeing to worry about.
Growing plants in pots really makes it easy to have a garden when you don't have the space for a traditional one.
Article Source: ArticleZones.com
About the Author
Sarah Duke is publisher of The Vegetable Patch at http://www.vegetablegardensite.com, where you'll find lots of information for starting a vegetable garden.
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