Here are several basic tips for gardening in containers.
Firstly, use a good quality potting mix for the soil in your container. Potting mix that includes perlite, peat, and a wetting agent, will be a light, nutrient-rich soil to get your plants off to a good start.
Garden soil from your back yard can compact and turn concrete-like after regular watering. If this happens, the plant roots will cease growing as they need a good open soil to allow for the roots to travel and for absorbing nutrients. Quite often, depending on your geographic location, there may well be a high percentage of clay in the soil from your yard.
Not only will a high clay content shrink as it dries, but indeed dry to a close representation of something kiln-fired. Just to add to the misery, clay will not absorb water. It will hold water, most certainly and you will be able to see it too – sitting on top.
Although you can find some plants that indeed handle high clay content, how many others do you wish to kill in order to find out? Also, it is a pretty safe bet, that any decorative plants you purchase, will not be able to endure such rigors.
Do not use pure compost, either. Compost will quickly shrink and may very well harbour insects, disease, or un-composted material that will rot the roots of your potted plants. Unless you are desperate, try not to re-use the spent potting mix from last year’s pots, or plants passed their prime. This is no better than using half-flat batteries in some device, namely, it is a waste of time.
Good potting mix is relatively cheap, so do your plants and yourself a favour, get fresh soil. If you insist on using old soil, you are going to have to feed your plants a lot more frequently. The soil from spent pot plants, is best incorporated into the compost heap, to ultimately be revitalized through that process, to be mixed with the following year’s soil mix.
Do not over-feed your container plants. This will only lead to an over-abundance of leaves, or long sappy growth that is easily damaged and susceptible to insect attack. Fish-emulsion, or seaweed-emulsion, will provide all the trace elements plants require and it comes highly recommended.
Liquid plant foods promote healthy growth for strong plants. The addition of a little slow-release fertiliser beads, will attend to the plant’s needs on those occasions that the liquid feed is forgotten.
When watering plants in containers, regardless of the size of the pot, be sure to soak it completely at each watering. This does not mean that you keep watering, until it runs out the bottom of the pot. A far better method of making sure the plant has enough water, is to either soak the entire pot in a bucket of water, or, if the container is too large to be moved – water it a number of times throughout the day.
To clarify watering of the larger containers, as you water it throughout the day, use a full watering-can with a rose spray head each time. If you merely place a hose slowly trickling into the container, the water will probably form channels via unseen air-pockets and cracks in the soil, to the bottom of the pot.
Apart from a shallow area below the top of the soil and, around those channels, little else gets the needed moisture. You see the water running out the bottom and think “good-o”, but little has actually been achieved for the water requirements of the plant.
These few basic tips for gardening in containers, should help you to get started with potted plants.