A Container Garden and Its Designs
The last few articles discussed classic garden designs for people with rather large yards to work with. Not everyone has this luxury, though. A good amount of people who want to start gardening and enjoy the benefits of having an herb garden live in buildings in the city. Because of the lack of space and the fact that there is no soil, these garden lovers need to come up with other ways of growing herbs. The most popular method developed is to start a container garden.
Container gardening is very popular in urban areas. It allows you to have a garden despite living in the city. Even people who live in the suburbs, either in townhouses or other small homes also choose to grow container herb gardens because their homes lack the space needed for a more formal garden. To concretely define it, a container garden is basically growing plants, in this case herbs, in containers.
Containers range from window boxes, terra cota pots, jars, small ceramic pots, or even old cans. Anything can be a container for a container garden. It just needs to be able to hold a good amount of soil (good amounts depend on how large your plant is) and to have a draining system for the water. Most ready made containers already have holes in the bottom and the sides for the water to drain out. If you want to start your garden with makeshift containers from around your home, you must remember to put holes at the bottom so that your plant's roots don't rot and kill your herb.
Some people who do have larger pieces of land to work with start their herb gardens as container gardens anyway. It's a good way to see if you will like growing herbs without having to put a lot of effort into arranging the rest of your garden. Formal gardens do take some work, and if you realize that you don't want having herbs or such a formal garden, then having a container garden is a good way to have a trial run. Because each herb is in a separate container, it allows you to really study the type of plant and its characteristics.
A plus to starting your herb garden as a container garden is you can have one right away. Many herbs sold in gardening stores already come in containers. You can buy the herbs you want to grow (not much work needed since they're already growing), and just place them in a sunny spot, remembering to water them as required.
Container gardens can be quite convenient, but it must be remembered that plants do need to be transplanted when they become too big for their containers. Many times people forget about this and let the plant grow to be very large till it's too large to transplant to another container and needs to be transplanted to the ground (and with the help of several people at that!)
Herbs that grow up to six feet tall should be transplanted often by dividing the plant in half, all the way down to the roots. These will grow to separate plants. You can keep one and give one away. You can also choose to harvest the leaves from one of the plants completely and store the herbs or give those away as presents.
Next Article: Where to Put Your Containers: Window Herb Gardens
