Growing your own fruits and vegetables provides so many perks. For starters, you’ll save money on your grocery bills, plus have fresher produce than you’ll find at a store. You’ll also know exactly what you’re feeding your family, and you’ll have fun doing something together by establishing your own edible garden.
It’s quite important to pick the right beds, containers and soil for your space. If you’re gardening in an urban area, elevated planter box could be a good idea. In a downtown area, it’s always tricky to plant in a backyard straight into the ground. Because you’re often competing with roots of trees, with whatever was in the ground before, things that contractors may have put down there. Elevated planters, which work well for condos and rooftop gardens as well, allow you to control or change the type and quality of the soil your plants will grow in more easily.
If container gardening makes more sense for your space, just be sure to use containers that offer sufficient depth and also drainage (meaning that it has one or more holes at the base). With balcony gardening and container gardening, the depth of your planter really matters in terms of what you want to growsays . For larger-scale plants such as tomatoes, squashes, eggplants and peppers, it’s recommended a planter that’s at least two feet deep, both for stability and to give the roots enough space.
Even the colour of your container can affect plant health and productivity. If you have a container that’s black, that’s actually really great for your hot crops like peppers and eggplants, because black absorbs the sun and creates more heat for those heat-loving plants. Whereas if you plant greens or cooler crops in it, that additional heat actually might damage them or lead to bolting, where plants start to send up their flowers or seed shoots earlier than they should.
