Container Gardening 101: Go Green and Live Healthy

Consuming fruit and veggies in any form is one of the best things you can do for your health. According to healthcare providers, adding fruit but especially veggies to your diet is one step closer towards better health. But unfortunately, we cannot rely on the ones sold in stores since most of them are treated with chemicals, pesticides and toxins that can easily make their way in our bloodstream.

Ideally, you should turn to the use of organic produce, and you can take a more proactive approach to your health and well-being by growing your own. Now, it’s easier than ever to grow your own organic vegetables thanks to container gardening.

What Is Container Gardening?

As the name suggests, a container vegetable garden is growing veggies in a pot, ideal for those of you who don’t have a home with a garden or raised beds to grow your own food. And while in the past container gardening was done in regular containers, nowadays, this can be done in self-watering planters.

What Makes Self-Watering Planters the Ideal Choice?

Versatile self-watering container vegetable garden planters are a safe and simple alternative that makes growing organic vegetables piece of cake. These containers are known for their built-in water reservoir that prevents water wastage while allowing the plants to receive just the needed amount of water at the right time.

Given the fact that the water doesn’t drain through the holes, but instead stays inside the water reservoir, this means that the soil will retain all of its nutrients and you won’t have to regularly add organic fertilisers in order to maintain the nutrient levels. As watering vegetable planter boxes are considered more of a deep-watering solution rather than shallow watering (which is the case with regular containers), this will promote healthier root growth.

This, along with the nutrient filled soil, guarantees having healthy organic vegetable produce without any major effort. Last but not least, there’s another benefit of using container vegetable garden self-watering planters which is the convenience they offer. They make for less watering without endangering the vegetables. In fact, you can go days without refilling the water reservoir since the veggies will receive only the needed amount of water.

Benefits of Container Gardening

The greatest thing about growing your own veggies in veggie pots is that you get flexibility with where and when you want or need to move them. This can be especially helpful in summer when the extremely hot and harmful sun can even dry out the veggies and their leaves beyond repair.

Additionally, this way of growing your own food helps you be in charge of how you treat and grow your veggies, giving you the opportunity to get the purest and most organic form of them. With organic produce like this, you won’t have to worry about the things you put on your plate and in your body. You can have plenty of them and eat them whenever you want. Plus, the satisfaction of growing your own food and enjoying it is beyond amazing.

The last thing that’ll contribute to consuming the safest possible veggies is the self-watering container’ material. When in the search for quality and safe containers of this kind, make sure to choose ones made from food-safe and BPA-free plastic.

What Is the Best Soil for Container Gardening?

No planter nor quality veggie seed will give you excellent results if you don’t have the right soil to begin with. Veggies grown in containers need the best possible nutrients, drainage, and aeration to have healthy root growth and to produce a good harvest. So, in order to create the ideal vegetable growing conditions, you should avoid using soil from the garden because soils of that kind are heavy, can become waterlogged, and even harbour many insects and diseases which will result in a poor harvest.

Instead, you should use a ready-made potting mix that is specifically made for growing veggies in containers. These soils are lightweight, quick-drying, and perfect for the purpose. Usually, such soils consist of coconut coir or peat, perlite, vermiculite, and some additives which are needed for creating the perfect veggie growing conditions.

What Vegetables Are Good for Container Gardening?

Container gardening in self-watering planters is great for growing different kinds of vegetables too. In addition to growing tomatoes of different kinds, these planters are also perfect for growing peas, potatoes, lettuce and salad greens, cucumbers, hot and sweet peppers, radishes, eggplant, carrots, beetroot, salad onions, and salad turnips among others.

The list of growing vegetables in planters is huge, but keep in mind you can also use the planters to grow your own fruits as well. Apples, peaches and plums are among the most popular types you can grow, however, different kinds of berries like strawberries, raspberries and blueberries are a nice fit too for this kind of gardening. Lastly, if you’re a fan of herbs in your foods, basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and mint are just some of the many options you can choose.