Container Gardening

Building you own greenhouse is an ideal way to have the greenhouse of your dreams. When you build your own greenhouse you can design the greenhouse to your own specification meaning you can make the greenhouse the exact size and shape that you require.

A greenhouse is an ideal growing location for most plants including vegetable, flowers and orchids. Greenhouses provide extra humidity and sunlight which these plants require to thrive. A greenhouse can also be a retreat from the cold weather outdoors, you can sow and plant seeds in the worst weather and still come out dry and warm.

There are a range of supplies and materials that can be bought that will help you with the building of a greenhouse.  These are generally cheap so you can still build your own greenhouse if you only have a small budget.  The size is of course one of the main things that will affect how much it will cost to make your greenhouse.  Remember, the larger the greenhouse the more plants you can grow.

Below I have provided a number of tips that should advise you on how to build your own greenhouse.

1).  You can always salvage materials to build your greenhouse; this will minimize the cost of building the greenhouse and will also recycle materials others would just throw away.  You will need to consider this when first designing your greenhouse.

2).  Consider your climate carefully along with the warmth and heat that your plants need.  An insulated greenhouse should keep the greenhouse temperature high during the winter.  In the heat of the summer some shade may be advisable, this will prevent your greenhouse getting too hot and potentially burning your plants leaves.

3). Air circulation is another thing that you should consider when designing the greenhouse.  Humidity control, ventilation and heat control are all important; you need to create an ideal location for the plants you are growing in the greenhouse.

4). Sunlight is important; you should build your greenhouse where there is enough sunlight. Try and build your greenhouse in a sunny location that gets at least eight hours of sun per day.

5). Are you going to build your greenhouse out of glass, plastic or fiberglass? Glass is ideal but is the most expensive, if you are on a low budget plastic is your best option.

6). Create solid foundations, you need the greenhouse to be safe and solid. You can build your greenhouse on the bare earth, on a stone foundation or a cement foundation.

7). A greenhouse is not just a place to grow plants.  Greenhouses are often used as a retreat to relax in.  Consider adding a bench or somewhere to sit in the greenhouse. You may also consider using things like automated watering systems, heating and ventilation equipment to make things easier.

8). Pest control is another thing that you need to think about carefully.  Pests and disease can be a real problem in a greenhouse.  I recommend using good animals to kill the bad - nature’s pest control.  Chemicals can also be used but I don’t advise using them.

9). Consider saving space to store your gardening equipment.  You may wish to store compost, tools, and selected fertilizers in your greenhouse.  Tools and equipment like this can take up a lot of room so you may consider storing these in a wooden shed.

Building your own greenhouse is the ideal way to make the greenhouse that you have always dreamed of.

This is a bizarre piece of street art where a whole container garden is being grown from inside of a car. The car is protesting about car parking, “More parks less parking” can be found written on the car.

This certainly brings a whole new concept to the words Container Growing!!

I think I have apple tree blight! I’m worried! Help!!

I have been growing apples for several years and last year they were fantastic, the best tasting apples I have ever had. However this year one of my trees leaves have all gone slightly brown and this is rapidly spreading over the entire tree. There are brown patches on the fruit and one of my friends who’s an allotment ‘oldie’ says that they have a serious case of blight.

This could be a problem!

Getting children involved in gardening can be a tough task to tackle. The most important thing to remember is to keep gardening fun and exciting and fun for children. Hopefully my tips can help you get your children gardening.

Getting the entire family in the garden can be very rewarding. You get to spend quality time with your family, you accomplish work in the garden, and you improve your health by receiving fresh air and exercise. Younger children look up to Mum and Dad as their role models. Let your children help you work in the garden. Tell your children they are doing a good job in the garden and it will make them want to keep helping.

Another tip to getting children gardening is to turn gardening into a game or contest. A contest idea might be to see who can pick the most beans, or who can pull the most weeds. We are born with a competitive spirit so this technique should work. You could create a scarecrow making contest so everybody can make their own scarecrow. Make sure you compliment each child on all their work.

Offer rewards or treats to your children for helping in the garden. However you shouldn’t bribe your children with rewards or treats. Ask your children to help with the garden. After the work is done you can offer the reward. This will train your children to know they will be rewarded for doing hard work.

When it comes time to harvest your crops, use a cookbook designed for children to make snacks and meals. This will help children harvest and also get your children involved in cooking. You can find a children’s cookbook at the library or on the internet. Recipes can also be found on cooking websites.

Along with cooking with the produce, you can use the produce for crafts. One fun family activity is to carve pumpkins in the autumn. Potatoes can be used for making stamps. All you need to do is carve a design in a potato and dip it into paint. You can then stamp paper to create wrapping paper or whatever you wish.

One last idea is to let your children have a garden to call their own. What you need to do is dig up a small area and let your children take over from there. You can let your children decide what to plant in their garden. There are seed packets intended for children that would be great to purchase. They can even start the plants indoors to watch them grow day by day.

I mentioned this yesterday….

There are a new breed of gardeners in town, different to every other gardener you have ever met. I call these gardeners Elite gardeners. Adapting to any situation that is thrown at them these elite gardeners tackle the situation directly.

These elite gardeners scavenge for information, search for clues and always find an answer. They read blogs, are active posters in forums and love a healthy debate.

Are you an elite gardener??

Want to know how to create rustic looking wooden fencing? My tip of the day is to use wooden pallets. They can easily be cut up into fence like pieces and built into a strong rustic fence. Best of all you can get pallets for free if you look around.

I have a fence in my garden that is made out of old pallets, it looks good, does the job, was free and really easy to make. Trust me I really not to great at making things, better at breaking them in fact but I made my own little fence using pallets and it is perfect.

It’s simple, free and works!!

In my blog I do mainly focus on container gardening but growing vegetables is raised beds is also something that I want to talk about here.

The basic principle is to have a number of raised beds which are ideally 4ft x 10ft in size. The beds are divided by paths which I recommend are covered with wood chippings or are flagged to prevent weeds growing. It’s that simple.

Growing vegetables in raised beds takes a lot of work out of gardening, you won’t be standing on the raised beds so no major digging will be required, less bending down will be required as well as a number of other benefits.

I will be talking about growing fruit and vegetables in raised beds more over the next few weeks. Please, if you are interested in learning more about raised bed gardening post a comment

It’s getting late and I have had a busy day today so I am going to keep this post quick, simple and to the point! Hopefully I will have some spare time tomorrow to make a few posts here.

Tomato Tiny Tim is one of my favorite tomatoes to grow in containers and hanging baskets. The plants produce heavy crops of small cherry tomatoes which taste fantastic and love growing outdoors. The small dwarf bush tomatoes are extremely well suited to being grown in containers.

This is a variety that I personally recommend that you grow in your small garden! They are simple to grow and care for meaning that they are perfect if you have little time to garden.

I told you this post would be quick and to the point!

Welcome to my blog!!

In this blog I am going to be talking about and discussing container gardening as well as my experiences. I will teach you everything I know about container gardening and you will soon be a container gardening expert in your own right.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them.

With Thanks