The Pot That Was
Inevitable
You knew it was
going to happen. First there were window boxes and then came hanging
baskets. I don’t speak historically: this is not about the hanging
gardens of Babylon. This is about our own recent gardening
experience. After boxes and baskets came an exuberance of pots! Tall
and dramatic, short and fat, carved or comical or contrived, there
was a pot for every taste. They came in stone, clay, foam,
fiberglass, concrete, hypertufa troughs, terra cotta, antique iron,
even teak.
Along with the
proliferation of pots came newer and better balanced potting soils
with clever schemes for watering as well as substances in the mix to
hold and release water. Gardeners excelled in finding plants
appropriate for containers, from modest herb combinations to exotic
jungle themes, flamboyant tropicals. Container gardening was fad,
fun, fashion and a stretch of creative talent.
So here we are
with all these wonderful pots ready for the next phase of container
gardening, the vegetable plot in a pot! I know, you have had
tomatoes in pots for years but today there are other vegetables bred
to flourish in containers. They are going to be smaller, following
the example of patio tomatoes. Can you imagine successive seedings
of ‘little finger’ carrots? One tender and juicy variety is
‘Mignon’, another is ‘Mini Finger’. One vegetable that is both easy
to grow and a handsome plant is eggplant. Two f1 hybrids are
available as seed, ‘Baby Rosanna’ and ‘Orlando’.
‘Baby Rosanna’
is only two feet tall and provides a summer of elongated golf ball
sized fruits. Not only are they without the bitterness you had to
blanch out of large eggplants, they also hold their fine quality
long after picking. ‘Orlando’ has the same fine flavored fruit on a
heavy yielding plant perfect for a container on a sunny patio.
So
attractive it may pass for a flower is a dwarf runner bean,
‘Hestia’. These dwarf bushy plants have handsome foliage, oval and
slightly heart-shaped and the stems are lined with red and white
flowers. So successful have gardeners been with ‘greens’ in small
spaces that there are now varieties adaptable to pots. Can’t you
picture a pot featuring a circle of tennis ball sized mini iceberg
lettuces? Not just small, but with greatly improved taste and
crunch. Because they are so dense, one is lunch! Successive seedings
of ‘Mini Green Improved’ will keep them coming.
Another lettuce is ‘Tintin’ a slightly larger ‘Little Gem’ type with
bubbled
leaves. Found in the
Thompson and Morgan catalog, it bears up well in summer heat when
most lettuces tend to bolt. This catalog also features a new hybrid
spinach for pots, Spinach Fiorana f1 hybrid, delicious at any stage
of growth “…good resistance against downy mildew…and good bolting
resistance for summer sowings.”
Surely squash is
one vegetable you never expected would fit into a pot. In previous
gardens I remember squashes hiding under the leaves until they were
too large to fit into the kitchen sink. How easily they could be
harvested from a pot with no place to hide. Summer squash ‘Black
Forest’ climbs to save space, using a stout cane or a trellis in the
pot. This squash and another one, ‘Midnight’, have dark green slim
six-inch fruits.
There are new
peppers and tomatoes this year especially developed to grow well in
containers. Pepper foliage has always been elegant enough for the
most refined sunny flower border and what could be prettier than a
patio pot graced with sweet pepper ‘Mohawk’ with its deep gold
peppers.
The new tomato
plants for pots have become more compact and attractive as well
although in growing tomatoes it is the taste that really counts. Bon
appetite!
To
ensure a tasty crop, you must begin with a good quality potting soil
and even if you choose one containing fertilizer in the mix, you
have to be observant of the cultural requirements for whatever you
are growing, using a liquid or slow-release fertilizer as needed.
Pots usually must be watered daily if it is especially hot or windy,
which does wash out or dilute the food you have just put in. In pot
culture of course, you do know the valuable water is going to the
roots and not wandering all over a half acre.