Spring Planting

There's a lot of work to do today!  I'm starting a vegetable container garden on the deck in my backyard in Michigan.  It has been cold this spring, but I'm hoping that it's still early enough in the season to get a good harvest later this summer.  We plan to grow tomatoes, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, chili peppers, eggplant, strawberries, English peas, radish, lettuce, carrots, and herbs - with lots of basil.  

I started out by making a sun chart of the deck.  Each hour I recorded the areas of direct sun, dappled sun, and shade.  Then I counted up the hours for each area and selected the proper plant for the site.  Seven hours of direct sunlight is about the most I'm going to get on the deck, but I should be able to grow tomatoes and other vegetables with high sun requirements.  I chose to put my vegetables on the deck because growing in the yard presents some big problems - the sunny sites are in areas that just aren't suitable for a garden, and the lawn is decidedly non-organic!

Then I went and got my pots - that was fun!  I tried to select the largest pots since I've heard that the vegetables will do much better.  This way the roots have room to grow to their full capacity, the soil will retain moisture, and there will be more nutrients for the plants.  In my selection I was  a little limited by my aesthetic preferences - there are plenty of really big containers that would be great for plants, but I prefer have something that will look pretty!  For the largest pots I went with fiberglass because it's lightweight and it looks natural.  I also have terracotta and wood.  I prefer not to use plastic if possible, but did buy some long plastic window box containers to hang on the railings - these will be for different varieties of lettuce.  

Now it's time to go out and have some fun!