Great Container Gardening Info & Ideas:

• Beautiful photos and great tips on creating a beautiful balcony container garden from Isabelle Palmer on Fennel and Fern
• aHa Modern Living is having a seed sale. There’s still time to sow plenty of fall and winter veggies, check it out!
• Andrea has a great list of and info about winter vegetables, all of them are suitable for containers.
• Renee shares some really cool photos of her recent trip to the DC Botanical Gardens. There are some great ideas for vertical gardening among her pics.
• I loved looking at the progression of Marie’s watermelon from flower to fruit. All grown on her rooftop.

Win a Beautiful Pot from Sunset

Would you like to win this neat pot from the Home by Sunset collection from Bauer Pottery? Sunset Magazine is giving one away to the person who comes up with the best idea for what to plant in the pot. More details here.

Roasted Ratatouille Pizza

Doesn’t this recipe from Vegetarian Times look awesome?! Great way to use up late summer veggies…

• 1 recipe Chewy Pizza Dough (click here for recipe)
• 1 28-oz. can peeled whole tomatoes
• 1 small eggplant, quartered and cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices (2 cups)
• 2 small yellow squash or zucchini, sliced into rounds (2 cups)
• 1/2 large red onion, thinly sliced (1 cup)
• 2 Tbs. olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (1 Tbs.)
• 1 Tbs. herbes de Provence
• 1/2 cup prepared marinara sauce or 1 recipe Quick Pizza Sauce (click here for recipe)
• 1/4 cup black olives or capers, optional

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Prepare Chewy Pizza Dough.

2. Drain tomatoes, and discard liquid. Halve each tomato lengthwise. Toss together tomatoes, eggplant, squash, red onion, oil, garlic, and herbes de Provence on baking sheet.

3. Roast vegetables 25 minutes, or until beginning to brown, tossing every 5 to 10 minutes. Cool 5 to 10 minutes, or store in refrigerator up to 3 days.

4. Meanwhile, shape Chewy Pizza Dough into 12-inch disk on baking sheet coated with cooking spray. Spread with sauce, and top with vegetables. Sprinkle with olives or capers, if using.

5. Place on middle rack in oven, and preheat oven to 350°F with pizza in oven. Once oven reaches 350°F, bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until bottom is crisp.

If you’re in Southern California, I hope you’ll join in a meetup group Adriana of Anarchy in the Garden and I have created. Eat Me is a group for Southern Californians who want to meet other gardeners who like growing their own food. It should be a lot of fun to meet in person and chat about gardening. I hope you’ll join us! “Like” Eat Me on Facebook, or follow @SoCalEatMe on Twitter.

Container Gardening Posts:

• Interested in growing carnivorous plants in your apartment? Check out this post on Far Out Flora about Nepenthes, also called Monkey Cups.
• Check out how beautiful Kim’s container garden has become on her Barefoot Gardening blog (which is a great way to garden, in my opinion).
• Kerry has reviewed a nifty looking watering can called U CAN. I like the positive subliminal message of the name.
• If you’re looking for a slender, modern style BBQ for your balcony, check out what Robin posted on Urban Gardens.
• Congratulate Mike on his first homegrown salad eaten on his new LA balcony!

Congrats Karen!

As you all know, I held a quick contest this week to give away two boxes of Triscuits with cards impregnated with seeds, and a $20 gift card to buy gardening supplies. To win, LOTB readers had to submit recipe ideas that used fresh from the garden ingredients and Triscuit crackers. I loved Karen’s simple, yet original idea to combine Marigold flowers, tomatoes, cream cheese & Triscuits. And I’m going to try recipe combining Nasturtium flowers and leaves, figs, and Camembert for the next GROW Project post. Karen, I’ll send you and email so I can get your mailing address. Your prize will be in the mail next week. Enjoy! Smart Pots Update I wanted to pass along a quick observation about my Smart Pot comparison. By now I’ve had my two identical tomato plants in their respective pots (one plastic, one Smart Pot) for about 5 months. I’ve been harvesting tomatoes from both plants for awhile, but the Smart Pot plant is more prolific, healthier, and about 18 inches taller. Cheesy Gardening Joke

Photo by Melissa Robison

Two friars are having trouble paying off the belfry, so they open a florist shop. Everyone wants to buy flowers from the men of God so business is quickly booming. The florist across town sees a huge drop in sales and asks the two friars to close their shop, but they refuse. A month later the florist begs the friars to close because he’s having trouble feeding his family. Again, they refuse, so the florist hires Hugh McTaggert. Hugh is the roughest, toughest thug in town and is hired to “persuade” the friars to close. Hugh asks the friars to close their florist shop. When they refuse, he threatens to beat the crap out of them and wreck their shop every day they remain open, so they close. This proves once again that Hugh and only Hugh can prevent florist friars. [Source] Container Gardening in the News

• New York City reached an agreement with it’s community gardens. The Wall Street Journal has the story.
• Dill is a superb herb. Or at least that’s what Jana Louise Smit of Helium thinks.
• The Seattle Post covers two of my favorite topics: container gardens and cocktails.

Resort hotels are great places to look for gardening ideas. Take, for example, the Hyatt Regency in Aruba. The hotel seems to be on a beautifully maintained piece of property with tons of ideas that you can take home to your balcony or patio.

The resort’s Flora & Fauna Expert (how do I get that job?!), Erwin Noguera, says that Bougainvillea filters out dust and cools the air that passes through it. Also, because cool air is heavier than hot air, a canopy of bougainvillea will trap cool air underneath it. Sounds like a great take-home idea to me!

A closer look at one of the Hyatt Regency’s patios.

According to Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening book, June is a good time to plant Bougainvillea (except for extremely hot interior zones). Some varieties of Bougainvillea can get really large or bushy, so if you would like to train your plant to provide a shade canopy, be sure to pick a vining variety that will be the appropriate size for your space. Or you can look for one trained as a large patio tree. She also recommends cutting the nursery pot away from the root ball and treating the roots and crown of the plant very gently, as they don’t handle rough treatment very well.

I saw this Bougainvillea patio tree at the South Coast Plaza garden show. You can see what a nice “umbrella” it can create…

To use Bougainvillea to shade your balcony or patio, I recommend getting a pot that you can just barely wrap your arms around, and that is taller than it is wide. Water deeply on the day you plant it, and on each of the three following days. Thereafter, you only need to water once a week (or if you see signs of drought stress), but always water deeply (until you see water flowing out of the drainage holes). Pat Welsh recommends fertilizing once a month between April and August.

Speaking of interesting places to get gardening inspiration, if you’ve ever been to The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, you’ll surely have seen the columnar umbrellas of Bougainvillea in their gardens. You can get a similar umbrella-type trellis to use on your patio. Or you can train it up onto your patio cover or onto a traditional trellis.

Linaria ‘Enchantment’ and Petunia ‘Pretty Much Picasso’