Sylvia McLaurin has been successfully gardening in containers
for
three years. Struggling to grow vegetables in her dark, cramped
backyard in Athens, Ga., McLaurin moved her garden to containers
along her driveway, where it thrives.

Plants need soil, water and sunlight, she says. If they have
that, they don’t care if they’re grown on a mountainside or in
an
asphalt jungle.

In 25-gallon plastic tubs, she grows endive and chicory, kale
and
squash. Other tubs have mosaics of herbs: parsley, rosemary,
thyme and basil.

“On the downside, with containers you never really get that
much,” she said. “But it’s just so nice to be able to grow
enough
fresh vegetables for one meal.”

Container gardens are fairly low-maintenance. There’s much less
weeding to do than in traditional gardens. And you don’t have to
till any hard soil.

Containers are portable, too, which is handy if you have to
move.
Like any garden, though, gardening in containers requires
planning.

“There are three S’s to container gardening: soil, the size of
the full-grown plant and the size of the container,” said Wayne
McLaurin, Sylvia’s husband and an Extension Service
horticulturist with the University of Georgia College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Container gardeners get better results, he said, if they start
with a good growing medium. After all, the soil is going to be
your plants’ home, food and furniture. “That 40-pound bag of
soil
for 99 cents is probably not the way you want to go, ” he
said.

He suggests trying soilless potting media composed of peat moss
and vermiculite. These mixes are dark, spongy and lightweight,
which is important if you must move your plants around. They’re
free of diseases and weeds, too.

McLaurin recommends buying transplants from a local nursery.
They’re usually hardy for your area and save time over
germinating seeds.

Determine the size your plants will be when mature and whether
they favor full sun, partial sun or shade.

Bush and dwarf varieties take less growing room. But they also
mean a smaller harvest. “You might get as many vegetables off
one
normal-sized plant as you get off two or three dwarf plants,”
McLaurin said.

Leaf lettuces, radishes, strawberries, cherry tomatoes and herbs
are naturally smaller plants and ideal for container planting.

The possibilities for containers are endless.

“You can plant in anything that can hold soil,” said Brenda
Beckham, a master gardener. “Containers need to be big enough to
hold the plant’s root mass and small enough to be portable. And
they need drainage holes.”

Smaller terra-cotta pots are cheap and lightweight. They’re
perfect for a single strawberry plant or some herbs. But Beckham
suggests using plastic pots if you’re going to plant a larger
plant.

“They’re lighter, cheaper and come in larger sizes than standard
terra-cotta pots,” she said. Many plastic pots are made to look
like terra-cotta, too.

Look around for free containers, Beckham said. You can even go
potless, growing plants like radishes, spring onions and leaf
lettuces in a bag of media, just cutting slits in the top to
insert your plants and in the bottom for drainage.

Sylvia McLaurin points out that plants grow only in about the
first 6 inches of soil. To reduce the weight, she turns small
nursery containers upside down at the bottom of the half-barrels
and fills in with soil around and on top of them.

If the base of your plant is too light and the plant starts to
get top-heavy, fill the bottom few inches with sand.

Once she brought in her first crop of tomatoes and endive, all
McLaurin could think about was fitting more into next year’s
garden.

“I’ve never met a gardener who didn’t want more room,” she said.
“Container gardeners are no different.”