This year’s porch garden

Do you enjoy the sunshine warming your shoulders? The smell of fresh dug earth? The feel of the dirt sliding through your fingertips? The smile on your face as you dream of all the plants to be? This can happen not once, but twice a year! Yes, it’s time for fall planting!!

If these words are close to your heart, my friend, you are a gardener. You can’t help it. It brings such joy to you and your friends and neighbors too. If you’re like me, you’ve gone from many outside gardens to something a little smaller. You’ve moved from the farm to the city, your growing area is now limited. I live in an apartment building outside the great Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee. My front porch is my gardening area.

It is 6′ wide by 15′ long. There is an upstairs with a railing. After asking nicely and sharing plants, I also use 10-12 chains connected from their balcony to hang down on my side of the porch. Those hold hanging baskets, bird feeders, hummingbird feeder, wind chimes and crystals of many colors and sizes. My entire garden is now grown in containers. You would be amazed by the many sizes, styles and shapes that you can grow things in.

I have commercial pots from greenhouses, window boxes in my two outside windowsills, pots from tiny to large and even a few grow bags that I can also use over and over each year. At the end of each season, I watch for the pots to “go on sale”, to get good deals on various size pots that I could not afford during the peak of the season. Yard sales, thrift stores, online offers all help to add to my collection of gardening containers.

 

It’s true… Container gardening needs extra care. Unlike their “in the ground” cousins, their very survival depends on you! The mixture of the potting medium, the variety of seed you want to grow, the space needed, stakes for the taller plants, their only source of water. And you will need to water at least every other day. You can also move your pots around as needed for sunshine during the growing season. Highlight the plants that are doing best!

I also have a gardening secret to share with you. I, myself can’t stand to wear gardening gloves. I like the feel of the dirt in my hands. But as we all know, the aggravation of getting the dirt out from under your fingertips. Here’s my solution. When your bathroom bar soap gets down to the slither, take it to the gardening area. Before each session, scrape your fingernails down the soap, be sure to get them all.

The soap will stay under the nails, keeping the dirt out, making for easy wash up each and every time! SMILE

I like to mix my potting medium, an organic potting soil, compost, sand, peat moss, a little vermiculite. This makes for easy watering, nutrients in the soil and everything your plants will need to grow happy and healthy. Fall gardening is even easier than planting in the spring. The weather is warm so no plants get stunted by a cold snap, the seeds germinate quickly and produce even faster. Whether it’s flowers or vegetables, trees, or shrubs, there is no time better than fall.

You can clean up the pots of plants that have gone to seed, refurbish the dirt and start all over again. I have planted basil, onion sets, lettuce, spinach, carrots, moss roses and snapdragons just this week. It’s always exciting to watch the seeds grow into lovely plants. Why limit that joy to once a year? Take a chance, plant those leftover seeds and watch your gardens bloom with color and fill your table with the bounty of vegetables you can produce!

Most of all, Happy GARDENING!