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

Everyone knows the usual suspects when it comes to basil. Who hasn’t grown–or at least tasted–the large leaf, sweet, Italian types? Basil being such an awesome herb to grow in a pot,  I’m sure most LOTB readers have tried it. But there are more interesting basils to try, and some of them are particularly good for us container gardeners.

You might expect me to suggest one of the purple varieties of basil, and they are great. But they’re becoming pretty ubiquitous, so I am assuming you don’t need me to point out, for example, that All-America Selections winner ‘Purple Ruffles’ is a great basil. What I do want to point you towards are these guys, that you might not have heard of:

1. Lime

Ocimum bacilicum ‘Americanum,’ also known as Lime Basil, has the wonderful citrusy scent as lemon basils, but I think it’s sweeter, and not at all Pine-Sol-esque, like a lot of them can be. It forms compact plants that are less than 2 feet tall, and the leaves are…you guessed it! Lime green.

2. Pistou

‘Pistou,’ is the best mini basil I’ve tried. It forms perfectly round mounds of tiny leaves. The whole plant is no more than 10 inches tall and wide. Several of them would look great lined up in a windowbox. The leaves are very mild flavored and sweet. If you prefer a more freeform mini basil, check out ‘Minimum.’

3. Lemon Sweet Dani

Even Home Depot and Lowe’s carry lemon basil these days, but in my humble opinion, not all lemon basils are created equal. ‘Lemon Sweet Dani’ is by far the lemoniest while still having a pleasant flavor. More like a drink of lemonade than a bite of lemon.

4. Serata

With mixing ornamentals with edibles and using edibles as ornamentals being all the rage these days, I would be remiss if I didn’t point you towards ‘Serata,’ which is, in my opinion, one of the prettiest basils out there. The leaves are lobed and ruffled. Would look great in a mixed container with flowers.