How To Choose Containers For Your Garden?

Gardening

oi-Anwesha

By Anwesha Barari

Friday, January 27, 2012, 15:25

Container gardening is undeniably the most affordable and feasible type of gardening these days. It takes care of your space constraints and also allows you to have a garden in apartments where you do not have a yard or a porch to garden. However, this also makes containers a very important component of your entire gardening scheme. For potted plants the garden pots you use are just as important as the soil and the compost it needs.

So to choose containers for your garden that are suitable to the needs of your plants you need a little guidance. Here are the points you must consider before choosing containers.

Choosing Containers For Your Garden:

1. Size Does Matter: If you want to go by a thumb rule then the bigger your container the better it is for planting. A bigger pot holds more of water and soil (pots for garden reduce the soil quantity and thus nutrition for plants) and thus the plant will have higher chances of survival. This does not mean you buy huge basins for every plant but it is better to have a bigger pot unless you are planting a cacti.

2. The Watering Hole: You can turn almost any container into a garden pot but there are some basic parameters it should follow. The most important among them is the watering or drainage hole in the base of the pot. A hole is made right in the centre of the base of the garden container to drain out excess water. Without this the roots would rot and decay due to retained water.

3. How Does It Look? As it has been said earlier, pot gardening is very affordable because you can turn any container at your disposal into a pot for a potted plant by drilling a hole in its bottom and filling it with soil. However the aesthetics of it depends on you. You can turn a water mug into a beautiful pot by painting it or buy a beautifully crafted piece of pottery as a container for your plants.

4. Material Of The Pot: The material with which the pot is made is important because the temperature of the soil depends on it. It is better not use low quality plastic that can degenerate with time and get toxic. Metal (as it heats up quickly) leads extremes of temperature that can harm the roots. Wood is prone to decay on watering. Terra-cotta, burnt earth, cement, stone,peat etc are worthy options.

5. How Heavy Is It? If you are gardening in pots then you must ensure their mobility. They should not be so heavy that you cannot move them for sunning or rearranging your garden.

6. Does It Suit Your Plant? Some plants have roots that grow horizontally (tuber roots or bulbs) and some that grow vertically; they need wider or taller pots respectively.

Use these gardening tips to choose the right containers for your garden.