Container Garden Mistakes You Make
Container gardening can be a rewarding endeavor as it allows you to make the most of all the space available to you. A container garden can be indoor, in a greenhouse, or polythene under the lid or outdoors. Well-designed and managed container gardens can provide plenty of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers.
From fruit trees to tiny herbaceous plants in small pots, you can grow almost anything you can grow in the ground in a container garden.
Container gardens can, of course, expand the range of plants you can grow where you live. Containers can be filled with different pH in the growing medium or moved inside or under the lid in cold weather. But even though you can grow a large number of plants in a container garden, there are many things that can go wrong. Here are 5 mistakes you can make to help you avoid common problems:
1. Selecting containers made from the wrong materials
The first thing that is usually overlooked is what the containers are made of. What material is used for containers can have a big impact on how well the plants grow. And how easy they are to maintain. It is important to understand that each of the different materials has strengths and weaknesses. To achieve the best results, it is important to understand what they are. It is also important to match the properties of the containers to the plants you are trying to grow.
2. Selecting the wrong size containers
Gardeners can choose very small or large containers, regardless of what containers are being made. Of course, the size of the container you need depends on how you try to grow it. When choosing a container, you need to think about whether a plant can 'grow' in its container, or whether it should be potted gradually as it grows.
With some plants, you can select from the beginning a large container large enough to accommodate the plant once it is fully grown.
But other plants (especially those that do not tolerate 'wet feet') can fight in a very large container. When the root system takes up only a small amount of space in a container, it cannot draw water from the growing medium around the edges. So water stagnation is likely to become a problem.
Some plants do better when root growth is inhibited, and they do not work well when there is more room for expansion.
Knowing what size pot to choose and when to put the pot on can definitely be a complicated business. But it can slowly build knowledge as you continue to maintain your container garden.
3. Do not bot up / report when you need to
Many gardeners will start well by choosing the best containers for their plants. But new gardeners often forget to take care of their plants. They will not put them in a large container at the right time. Often, plants are placed in a pot when small roots appear through a hole in the bottom of a container. If the plant roots fill a container tightly, they will become 'pot bound'. Of course, a plant that is in a container that is too small will soon starve without enough water and nutrients, and the growing medium will become more compact.
4. Selecting the wrong growing medium
Another mistake that container gardeners often make is choosing the growing medium without specifying the plants they want to grow. While many plants can thrive in a medium that grows for the general-purpose, it is important to understand that there are certain requirements.
When choosing a growing medium, it is important to consider:
Fertility requirements of specific plants.
Water retention - Some plants need a moisture-retaining growing medium, while others require more free drainage. This is also important to keep in mind when using a container with large pores.
PH - Some plants need an acidic growing medium, others are spicy.
5. Placing containers in the wrong place
Even if they choose the right containers and the right growing medium for their plants, gardeners still sometimes get it wrong.
A common problem is not thinking enough about where the containers are placed.
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