Cliff Notes of My Container Gardening Class

Tuesday night I attended a Container Gardening class at the North Canton Library by Connie Greathouse of Harvest Home Greenhouse.  It was a great way to start gardening without actually getting out in the dirt yet.  Connie told us that you shouldn't plant your plants (no matter how nice the weather seems to be today!) until after the full moon in May.  While this seems like an old fashioned thing to say, it makes sense.  If it's clear the night of the full moon the pull of the moon can suck the warmth from the earth's atmosphere, causing temps to drop to dangers lows for sensitive plants.  If you remember last year, the night of the May full moon has just this phenomenon.  I was out covering all my vegetables and flowers with any scrap of cloth I could find to protect them from the cold.  This year I'm going to heed the warning and just wait until after the full moon.  (Which is next Wednesday the 14th.)



Another tip she gave us was to fertilize, fertilize, fertilize and water, water, water.  I realize this sounds pretty basic, and I have to boast, I think I do pretty well on watering, but I'm horrible about fertilizing.  Connie said that most planting mediums are soilless--therefore they have little to no nutrients.  Even the Miracle-Gro Potting Soil with the little beads of fertilizer only work at an average of 70 degrees, so if it's hotter than that, they're going to burst and release their food too soon.  So what she suggests is to feed your plants HALF of the recommended amount of fertilizer (she likes liquid) TWICE as often.  So if the container calls for a tablespoon diluted with a gallon every two weeks, you're going to use 1/2 TBSP diluted with a gallon of water every week.  She says it prevents the feast and famine phenomenon.  Makes sense to me.  I always thought of fertilizing as just adding chemicals to my plants, which of course turned me off to it, but as she talked about fertilizing and continually referred to it as "feeding"  I started to feel horrible about starving my plants!  As for the watering, she said (and this if for containers) that you should put your hose in the container and count to ten- On-one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, etc.  I think I do a pretty good job with this.  Or I did when I had plants in containers.  So now I'm all excited to start my container gardens.  I just need to find a good place to put all the pots and find plants that work for my amount of sun (I have a lot of shade in my yard because of all the trees.)

I'll have to add more details about this class later.  It was full of good info, but right now there's a little man on my lap that wants to watch Lego movies.  He's making it very difficult to type and he's very cute even when he's pushing my fingers while I'm trying to type.