potting soil | Arid Agriculture & Vegetable Gardening

Introduction

Today, I am going to share my experience of how to grow lettuce in a container placed anywhere in your kitchen or vegetable garden. Lettuce is a kind of vegetable that can be grown all-round the year in any climatic conditions. On top of it, its nutritious value is high and is best suited food ingredient for people who are on a diet. Low in saturated fats and sodium, lettuce is rich in;

Thiamin
Iron
Vitamin B6
Potassium

In addition to this, it is a good supplier of;

Dietary Fiber
Folate
Manganese
Vitamin A
Vitamin C
Vitamin K

Vegetable Gardening for Beginners: a Complete Guide

Lettuce in Urban Gardening Containers

Urban gardening is gaining popularity these days as it can add a joyous activity in your daily busy and hectic life. On the other hand, it also adds fresh and juicy vegetables for your meals and a healthy life style.

Salads are a vital part of our food, offering lots of valuable vitamins with least calories, thus ideal food for diet conscious people. For this purpose, lettuce are easy to grow in container of your vegetable garden that will return you with multiple harvests. Growing lettuce in kitchen garden can be an amazing experience for the beginners.

Below lines will guide you with the steps of how to grow lettuce in a container of your kitchen garden.

What do you Need?

Lettuce plant allows you multiple harvests, i.e. as you collect the leaves, new ones grow in place of older. For this reason, it is very important to have;

Proper quality potting soil
Good quality seeds.
Right size container

Recommended Container & Potting Soil for Growing Lettuce

Soil: First step in how to grow lettuce is the selection of proper soil. Good quality potting soil is available in the near nursery store while many online stores also offer potting soils for lettuce. Just be sure that potting soil for lettuce should have a mix of soil, peat or compost and vermiculite or perlite. This soil mix allows good water retention that is best suited for lettuce in containers.

Seeds: There are various varieties available for growing lettuce in a container. In fact when you search for a variety of lettuce, you will be amazed that there are endless varieties of lettuce available. My recommendation is to select the variety you like the most. This is because, different varieties taste differently. Among many, you can chose;

Crisphead
Butterhead
Lose leaf
Summer Crisp
Little Gem

What I have grown in container of my vegetable garden is Little Gem variety. This variety was originated in France. You will find this variety crunchy, sweet in taste with miniature heads of lettuce that are full of nooks and crannies. Little Gem variety of lettuce is best for salad dressing and can be cooked for food.

Container: The container should have an appropriate size with drainage holes. My container size is 12 inch and it has already given me 3 harvests and still lettuce plants are performing well. The container should have appropriate size because as the lettuce plant grows the root system also expands.

Sowing the Lettuce

Now you have reached the most important phase of growing lettuce in container. Choose the place that has good access to sunlight. Lettuce loves sunlight. Its large green leaves love to do photosynthesis a lot. So it is highly recommended to move the container into a brighter space with at least 8 hours sunlight access.

Now moving to the sowing phase, fill your container with potting soil up to an inch or even two centimeters below the rim. For direct sowing, place the seed 1/4 to 1/2 half inch deep and then cover with soil. The soil should be moistened.

It is recommended to sow your seeds 4 to 6 inches apart. on the contrary, I have sown my Little Gem lettuce seeds 3 inch apart and I am getting good produce of lettuce in container. However, if you are planning to cultivate Lose Leaf variety of lettuce, 4-6 inch distance is a must. Remember that the seedbed of your lettuce in container never dry out.

Caring the Growing Lettuce in Container

Now you have passed the important steps of growing lettuce in a container. Wait for germination. Usually it takes 5 to 10 days for germinating. Your newly born tiny lettuce plants need your care. Following are few points that should be taken care of while growing lettuce in a container.

Never add synthetic fertilizer to your lettuce in container of urban garden. The objective of having fresh and organic vegetable garden grown lettuce will die at the moment you add a pinch of fertilizer. So avoid it. The potting soil is already rich in nutrients.
Add compost ‘if’ needed.

Prepare Your Compost at Home. How? Here is my DIY Article on Making Compost at Home

If temperature is around your kitchen garden is more than 30^oC, move your container to a shady place. This is the biggest advantage of growing lettuce in a container to customize it in any manner you need.
Avoid drying of soil in your lettuce container.

Believe me, the result of all the previous steps and caring you will add to the growing lettuce in container will result in lush green and healthy lettuce leaves. They will be ready to cut right after six weeks after sowing. You can harvest them with a sharp knife but try to harvest little, just the amount you needed.

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Happy Growing and Eating 🙂

Cite this Article in APA Style as:

[box type=”note” align=”aligncenter” ]Rahman, M. A. (2017, September 16). How to Grow Lettuce Leaves In a Container? [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://aridagriculture.com/2017/09/16/how-to-grow-lettuce-leaves-in-a-container[/box]

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Introduction

Growing tomatoes is always a marathon in my community where our members compete to grow large number of tomatoes in their kitchen garden. To be honest, I have won the competition only once with Cherry Tomatoes variety. Love for growing tomatoes is simple. I am growing number of veggies and tomatoes are just like darling in urban gardening where they need proper attention. So today’s article is going to guide the beginners with the art of how to grow tomatoes in container of kitchen garden.

Growing tomatoes in container is fun. Container gardening is sophisticated where you can customize number of plants you want to grow so that proper attention can be paid. In my opinion, a kitchen garden without tomato plant in there is incomplete. So, whether you have large allotment, or small space like square foot gardening, you should have at least 2-3 plants (depending on the variety) of tomatoes grown.

Growing Tomato in Container. Picture Credit: Balcony Garden Web

In container gardening niche, growing tomatoes has global acceptance. Believe me, tomatoes are the easiest of all to grow. Without any further delay, let me tell you few simple tips to grow tomatoes in container of your kitchen garden.

New to Kitchen Gardening? Read this for Easy Understanding of Managing Your Own Kitchen Garden

1. Selecting the Right Container

First step in how to grow tomatoes in a container is the selection of an appropriate size of container. Keep in mind that; bigger the container, large will be the root system resultantly, plant will go bigger and bear more fruit. Tomatoes can grow in small containers too in your kitchen garden, but the fruit will be less. The plant I am growing in my home is in a 19’ diameter plastic container.

Plastic containers are best to grow tomatoes in container. Why? The answer is simple, clay or other kind of container is already heavy and after getting soil in it, they get much heavier. In that case, it becomes difficult to move them around. Similarly, in hot and humid climate, clay containers get dry early as compare to plastic container. So my advice is to choose a plastic container for growing tomatoes.

Next the preparation of your container for growing tomatoes is important. Last year, I did a mistake by putting some pebbles at the bottom of container for good drainage. But at the end of the season, when I tried to use that container soil in my kitchen garden’s raised beds, the soil got mixed with pebbles and I spent a lot time in separating those pebbles from my raised beds. To avoid this, this year, I used plastic window screening at the bottom. It allows good drainage while soil stays put. Urban gardening is all doing new experiments. And yes I do new experiments a lot and recommend my readers to do the same.

What’s the Best Tomato Variety to Grow?

Next challenge in how to grow tomatoes in container is the selection of variety. Not all the varieties are accustomed to perform same in containers as they do in kitchen garden soil. So if you are planning to grow tomatoes in container, select the best variety of tomatoes that perform well in containers. My recommendation is to select the Hybrid Indeterminate verities for container gardening. The reason is early maturing, disease tolerance and 100’s of fruits. The varieties like Sun Sugar, Carmello, Sweet Baby Girl Tomato, Sweet 100 Tomato and Sun Gold give optimum results in container.

For all these varieties, your container should be 12-16” deep. In addition to this, if you are not familiar with these varieties, visit your nearest nursery, online seed store or websites that sell tomatoes for urban gardening in containers. The nursery guy will surely have expertise. Try to harness from his experience or if you are buying online, they have given good description of each variety and clearly mention if the variety is suitable for container gardening.

Killing Weeds in Your Garden was Never so Easy. Read the Home Remedies Here

Steps in How to Grow Tomatoes in a Container

Choosing Premium Potting Soil

It is quite easy to get good potting soil. Premium quality potting soil is available with nurseries and online stores that is fit to grow tomatoes in container of your kitchen garden. My recommendation is to never use garden soil. It is infested with weeds, fungi and other unwanted material that will affect the health of tomato plant in container. There are various standards of potting soil available for container gardening viz., standard, premium and commercial mixes. Optimum potting mixes have compost, peat moss, perlite, sand and vermiculite in it. Another quality of good mix is that it does not get soggy but holds moisture. Lastly, you can add egg shells to your potting soil to enhance its performance.

Plants the Tomato Deeply

While panting the tomato plant in container of your kitchen garden, make sure you plant it deeply. The reason is simple. Deeper the plant, the better will be the root system and more fruit will be achieved on each branch. In urban gardening of tomatoes, a simple rule is to plant the tomato at least 6-8 inch deep, so that it has good access to moisture and nutrients.

Supporting and Protection

Support is needed to grow tomato in container. It is good to insert a support immediately at the time of planting tomato in container of your kitchen garden. This is to avoid any root damage at later stage of giving support. Also, providing the support while planting the tomato in container will help the plant to get accustomed with the support and will grow optimally.

Growing tomatoes in container is sometime risky in case if you have frequent visitors like squirrels, birds, critters and chipmunks in your kitchen garden. They can feast on your tomatoes while you are sleeping or away from home. To avoid this, use net around the mouth diameter of your container containing tomato plant. My recommendation is to place this protection at the time of planting. This will additionally help the plant in terms of early support.

Supply Consistent Amount of Water

Next in how to grow tomatoes in a container is the supply of consistent amount of water. Tomatoes are water lovers. Water, water and water your tomatoes in kitchen garden. Keeping the soil moist is the secret of success to grow tomatoes in container. To judge when your tomato in container needs water, simply do a finger test. If the top inch of soil in container is dry, it is time to supply water. In case of knee high tomato plant in container, daily water supply is needed especially during summers. In container gardening, timely watering is critical.

Refueling the Soil with Compost

As you see that your tomato plant is growing at a good pace in container, it means it has a good supply of nutrients in the soil. However, from the other side, it is a sign that the soil is exhausting in terms of nutrients. Never wait to refuel your potting soil till you see signs of deficiency in your growing or fruiting tomato plant. Use the compost of your kitchen garden regularly to refuel the nutrients in soil. Growing tomatoes need constant supply of these.

Making Your Own Compost at Home is Very Easy

Let’s the Sunlight Blush Your Tomatoes

Last vital thing to keep in mind in how to grow tomatoes is the optimum level of sunlight exposure to your tomato plants. Tomatoes love sunlight. Sunlight catalyzes the growth of tomatoes in urban gardening. Your tomato plant needs at least 6 hours of sunlight for proper functioning. In case of container gardening, you can control the time of exposure of your tomato plant to sunlight by adjusting its position. My tomato plant in kitchen garden has an access of 7-8 hours sunlight. So, while planning to grow tomatoes in container, sunlight factor should be in mind.

Urban gardening is fun. It is best to grow those vegetables in your kitchen garden that are easy to handle. Plus this will add taste and health to your meals.

Happy growing and eating 🙂

Cite this Article in APA Style as;

[box type=”note” align=”aligncenter” ]Rahman, M. A. (2017, September 08). How to Grow Tomatoes in Container of Your Kitchen Garden? [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://aridagriculture.com/2017/09/08/how-to-grow-tomatoes-in-container-of-your-kitchen-garden[/box]

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