Allium is the name of a great genus of plants for container gardeners. “Allium” literally means “garlic” in Latin, but botanically speaking, it includes onions, chives, and ornamental flowers as well. They all grow from bulbs and all have grass-like or tubular leaves with an onion/garlic scent to them when you brush up against the leaves. Because of their bulbous nature, they tend to be able to survive a bit of neglect, great for beginners and lazy gardeners!

Here’s how to grow several different type of edible alliums on your patio, porch, balcony, roof top, or anywhere else you can stick a pot…

Chives

Photo by Full Chat

I find chives annoying to start from seed (they seem to take awhile to germinate, and will only germinate if the conditions are perfectly acceptable to their delicate sensibilities), so I always use plants bought from the nursery. Since they are perrenial, if you buys chives once, you pretty much have them for life. Even in cold climates where hard freezes will kill the leaves, the plant should come back in spring.

The plants themselves are very easy to care for. If you’re growing them in a pot by themselves, chose one a few inches taller and wider than the pot the plants were growing in at the nursery (a minimum of 8 inches tall and wide). They also make a great “filler plant” in larger, mixed containers.

Chives are happiest being watered whenever the soil dries out, but I have inadvertantly forgotten to water my plants for weeks and they perked up and were just fine when I gave them a drink. If you use chives regularly in your cooking, fertilize your plants once a month. If you don’t use them too often, every other month is fine.

Varieties to look for: The options are rather limited, you’ve got chives and garlic chives (flat leaves, white flowers, faint garlic taste).

Scallions

Photo by h-bomb

Scallions are usually just immature onions, though there is such a thing as a “bunching onion” which never develop a fat, onion bulb and are always eaten as a scallion. Growing scallions, bunching onions, and actual onions are all pretty much the same.

Scallions are easy to start from seed. You can start them inside about a month before your last frost and sow more seeds every several weeks for a staggered harvest. As the seedlings grow, if you mostly want the white part of the scallion (both parts are edible), mound up more soil around the base as the plant grows. This will blanch the base and force it to be white.

When your plants are ready to transplant outside, I’ve found windowbox shaped pots to be ideal. Scallions can be grown very close together (about two inches apart), so you can fit several rows of plants in a typical window box. Or, if you prefer, arrange them in concentric circles in a round pot. Their roots are relatively shallow, so anything 8 inches deep or more is fine.

Varieties to look for: I’m growing ‘Delicious Duo’ from Renee’s Garden at my office. They’re a nice mix between scallions with a white base and those with red-tinged bases. Botanical Interests sells an heirloom variety called ‘Italian Red of Florence’ that has a slightly bulbous, very deep red base.

Garlic, Green Garlic & Garlic Scapes

Photo by Joe Shlobotnik

Garlic is worth a try because you can grow more interesting varieties than what is easily available at the store. “Green garlic” sounds mysterious but it’s just the leaves of regular garlic, which you can cut off whenever you wish if you don’t plan on harvesting the bulbs below (it stresses the plant out too much for much of a garlic head to form). Garlic scapes are the flower stalks of hard neck varieties of garlic. They’re edible and delicious!

If it’s heads of garlic you’re aiming for, I’ve had the best results in long window boxes or planter boxes. Don’t plant garlic you buy at the regular supermarket because it has probably been treated with a chemical to prevent it from sprouting. You’ll find the most interesting varieties from mail order catalogs/websites, but organic varieties at farmers markets will also work. Plant the cloves 4 inches deep and 4 inches apart in fall (October for temperate climates, November-January for mild-winter climates). Be sure to put down a balanced fertilizer at the time of planting. Don’t let the soil completely dry out, but other than that, ignore them until the leaves start popping up in spring.

Once leaves start popping up in spring, keep the soil evenly moist and fertilize once a month. Your plants should be ready to harvest in June or July. Soft-neck varieties tell you they’re ready by flopping over. Hard-neck varieties straighten their curled scapes.

If you’d like green garlic, simply pop a few cloves of an organic garlic bulb you bought at the farmers market and starting in early spring, stick the cloves in any container that has room for them. Keep them well watered (but not soggy) and fertilize with a balanced fertilizer once a month. Harvest the leaves whenever you need a mild garlic flavor in something you’re cooking, they will come back for several more harvests.

Varieties to look out for: Chesnok Red is listed by Territorial seed as the best all-around variety for cooking, while Spanish Roja is said to be the favorite of garlic connoisseurs. Chinese Pink is an extra early soft-neck variety that you can start harvesting in May.

Onions

I don’t think onions are a good use of space on a balcony, they take a long time to grow and homegrown onions taste exactly like store-bought varieties, but if you insist on growing your own, I’ve already written about growing onions in a container garden.

Container Gardening A to Z will continue in two weeks with the letter B!

Violas, cyclamen, chrysanthemums and ornamental kale are mainstays of fall container gardens. But what if you’re looking for a different, more unique look this fall? Why not tuck in a few herbs—especially ones you can use in your Thanksgiving feast!—to add a little spice to traditional fall flower pots? Read More >>>

Are you participating in the community container garden? I sure hope so! But even if you’re not, it’s still important to know what sized pot goes with what kind of edible plants. Tomatoes will not be happy living in a 10 inch pot for the entire summer. Nope. No way! But chives? They’re much more tolerant of tighter living quarters.

Affordability is also important, and to that end, I want to let you know about a discount cod to get 10% off any of the planters at MasterGardening.com. Just use LOTBplanters at checkout. Be sure to get your orders in quick, as the code runs out on April 18th. I get nothing out of the deal other than the satisfaction of knowing you guys saved some money. Happy shopping!

• Tomatoes – Think 5 gallon bucket size. At least!
• Sunflowers – For a dwarf variety such as Sunspot, you’ll want a pot that is at least 12 inches tall and wide (for one plant).
• Cucumbers – Polite varieties like Spacemaster also need a pot that is at least 12 inches tall and wide. The bigger the pot, the better though.
• Basil – You can get a pretty good-sized basil plant from a pot as shallow as a typical window box. I’d say you need a pot that is at minimum, 8 inches deep.
• Chives – You could probably get away with a pot that is only 6 inches deep, but I’d try to use a pot that is closer to 8 inches if possible.

Since MasterGardening.com was so nice to offer the discount, I went ahead and found some of their pots that will work great for edibles…

Photo by Mary Lauren

Of course, the ever popular Earth Box is a great option. Pam Baxter reviewed the Earth Box in a guest post awhile back. You’ll be able to fit several edible plants in one Earth Box. Earth Box’s manufacturer suggests that you can grow two tomato plants in one Earth Box, or four cucumbers, or six herbs (how pretty would the purple basil and chives look if you planted them every other one, so you had a purple and green checkerboard?). But I bet you could grow one tomatoes, one cucumber, and three herbs (two basils and one chives or two chives and one basil–your pick). Then you’d just need a pot for the sunflowers. You could get another Earth Box and fill it with them!

Another great type of pot that I can personally vouch for are Smart Pots. They are made out of fabric, which allows air to penetrate the roots, keeping your plants super healthy and happy.

Yet another type of pot that would be perfect for basil or chives are over the rail type planters. Pictured above is the Greenbo planter. I have three and am very happy with them. They are such a great space-saver because you don’t use one square inch of your balcony’s floor space. The pots are too shallow for tomatoes, cukes, or sunflowers though.

What kinds of pots do you plan to use in your edible garden this year?

You guys know how much I love gardening at my office. For those of us with extremely limited space, a pot or 8 at the office can mean doubling our growing space. In this video, Adriana and I visit the offices of punk record label Epitaph to show them how to grow some veggies at work.

Great Container Gardening Links

Shipping Pallet Herb Garden – Mike showcases a neat way to grow vertically using a shipping pallet and some bottles rescued from the recycle bin.

I Hate Patio Tomatoes – Kerry shares why she thinks you should skip the patio varieties and just grow the regular sized tomatoes.

How to Satisfy Cravings in an Urban Garden – Robin found a deluxo chocolate bar infused with ingredients from urban farms in Philadelphia and DC.

My Favorite Growing a Greener World Episodes

I am an official fan girl of the Growing a Greener World TV show on PBS (although I almost always watch the episodes online). I have a shirt to prove it. In case you haven’t seen the show, it’s hosted by Joe Lamp’l and Patti Moreno, and they cover eco-friendly living mixed with traditional gardening ideas. Oh, and one of my favorite parts are the recipes with Chef Nathan Lyon.

Here are my top five episodes:

1. Living Homegrown Fresh
2. Growing Power
3. Seed Savers Exchange
4. Greensgrow Farm
5. Waterwise Gardening

Best of Life on the Balcony – September 2010

• Anything Grows For Container Gardening
• Lessons Learned from 2 Years of Balcony Gardening
• What’s New and Cool for Gardeners
• How to Take Great Photos of Your Garden
• Interesting Ornaments for Container Gardens

Awhile back I heard about repurposing a mini-BBQ into an herb planter. I loved it, knew I wanted to try it myself, and immediately set about trying to track down a small grill on Craigslist. Buying anything on Craigslist is always an interesting experience, you get exposed to such a bizarre element of society. But that will have to be a post for another day…

This is a really easy project that you can complete in less than an hour. To get started, here’s what you’ll need:

Materials

• 1 small bag of good quality potting soil
• 3-5 herb plants, depending on the size of your BBQ and how full you like your containers
• 1 portable BBQ or hibachi
• 1 coffee filter

You won’t need the BBQ grate or the lid, so if your BBQ is missing those, it’s perfect for this project. If you do have those two items, why not list them on Craigslist’s free items section and see if anyone needs them.

Directions

Amazingly, I actually cleaned this BBQ. Or rather, I attempted to clean it. There was a lot of baked on grime and the lower grill was pretty rusty. Anyway, the first thing to do is clean the BBQ as much as possible. Then, place a coffee filter on top of the holes in the bottom of the grill. The coffee filter will allow water to drain out but prevent the potting soil from falling through. I decided to leave the lower grill in the BBQ because I thought it would help keep the plants from sinking down as the soil settles. We’ll see how that works out…

Next, fill up the BBQ with enough potting soil so that when the plants are placed in the BBQ, the plants’ bases are only an inch below the edge of BBQ. Arrange (and rearrange, if necessary) your plants until you have a pleasing combination. As you can see, I have sage, lavender, marjoram, oregano, and chives. Obviously you’ll want to plant the taller plants near the back and the trailing plants near the edge of the BBQ.

The plants I purchased were all growing in a biodegradable pot made out of coconut coir. The idea is that you don’t have to remove the pot (and disturb the roots) to plant the herbs. However, I did cut away the top part of the pot so that it would not be visible once the herbs were planted.

Next, fill in around the plants with potting soil. Gently tamp down the potting soil as you go and make sure you get potting soil in all the nooks and crannies. I usually miss at least one spot in the middle of a pot, so double check there.

Voila! You’re done.

Container Gardening Blog Posts

• This is a neat shot of Marie of 66 Square Feet’s terrace. Also, check out her roof farm.
• Almost everyone can use frugal gardening tips these days. Mike over at Urban Organic Gardener has got you covered.
• Adriana has a roundup of photos from her Anarchy in the Garden booth at the Patchwork Festival. There are some photos of yours truly teaching a demo on growing tomatoes in a container.
• Did you know you can freeze zucchini? That’s what Colleen at So Cal Gardening did.
• Oh, and Matt’s Redneck Garden is growing up fast!

Cheesy Gardening Joke

Why did the tomato turn red?

Because it saw the salad dressing.

Pineapple Sage Recipes

The other day on Twitter, I mentioned that I was going to cut back my pineapple sage a bit, and I needed a recipe to use up the cuttings. I ended up making a pineapple sage smoothie. For a very yummy breakfast drink, combine the following ingredients in blender a pulse until smooth:

• 1/3 cup skim milk
• 3/4 cup vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 banana
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 1/2 tablespoons packed pineapple sage, chopped

I also found recipes for Pineapple Sage Poundcake. And this recipe for Mango Pineapple Sage Salsa looks delicious, especially if served over their other recipe for corn fritters.

Container Gardening in the News

• This NY Times article about catios (i.e. patios for cats) seriously cracked me up.
• The Seattle Times reminds you to thin the fruit on your fruit tree to produce better results overall.
• I really enjoyed this article from The Tribune in Texas about water container gardens.

Raise your hand if you’d really like to grow a tomato or eggplant or some basil, but you just sort of kind of got around to thinking about maybe growing something. Yeah, I thought there’d be a few of you out there. Well, I’m here to tell you you’re screwed. You waited too long and now it’s too late in the season for you to grow anything you’d want to eat.

Just kidding! Gather around my friends, let’s talk fruits, vegetables and herbs that you can plant at the end of June and still enjoy by the end of summer.

First, look for edibles that you can grow from seed that are naturally very fast growing. For example, you can sow most carrot seeds now and be harvesting some orange deliciousness in late August, or early September. Radishes are definitely a go. And if you’re dying to snack on some homegrown baby salad greens, knock yourself out in the seed aisle. Many herbs can be sown now too, like basil, oregano, and if you promise to get them in a pot right-this-second, dill too.

But at this point in the game, for most edibles, you’re going to have to disabuse yourself of the notion that you’ll be growing things from seeds. You don’t have time. I am, of course, assuming you live somewhere with a first frost date is in September or October and need to pick your summer vegetables by the end of August or beginning of September. If you live in Southern California, disregard this post and do pretty much whatever you want.

So, most of you need to be looking for vegetable starts at the garden center. Look for varieties of vegetables that say “60 Days” on the tag, or any number less than 60. This number indicates how many days after planting the fruit or vegetable outside it will take before you can harvest something. For example, ‘Oregon Spring’ is a well known fast growing tomato that will produce fruit in both cool and hot climates. It’s tag will say “58 Days” which hopefully means you’ll be eating tomatoes around the 19th of August.

More good news. You can pick up pretty much any herb plant you want and will have plenty of time to grow them up into nice big bushy plants. Grab sage, rosemary, thyme, mint, and keep on going until your cart is full.

So…who wants to admit to just now getting around to planting their vegetable garden?

If you’d like to win the handpainted herb pots and wire caddy pictured above, you need to take a photo of your herb garden and add it to the LOTB Facebook fan page (if you’re not a fan already, you need to “like” the page before Facebook will allow you to add a photo). More details about the contest here.

A very generous Life on the Balcony benefactor has donated beautiful clay pots hand painted with images of oregano, basil, and parsley for this contest prize. The pots come with a bronze-finished wire caddy. I have to tell you, they are sitting in their box downstairs, and it was very hard for me to part with these pots. They’ve very cute, and I am sure the winner will love them!

To enter to win the herb pots and wire caddy, take a photo of your container herb garden and upload it to the Life on the Balcony Facebook page. The benefactor and I will be selecting the winning photograph based on the photo and the caption. We are impressed by creative photography and witty captions.

You have until May 28, 2010 at 11:59 pm PST to post your photo on the Facebook page. You’re more than welcome to post more than one entry, but if you flood the page with 20 photos a day, I’ll probably get annoyed and be grumpy when viewing your photos. That’s not a good thing. I will announce the winner on Monday, May 31.

To participate, you must:

• be at least 18 years old
• live in the United States
• submit a photo(s) that you personally took and for which you own all the rights

Photo Credits: ‘Playmobil Photographer’ photographed by blog.jmc.bz