Tuesday, April 22, 2008

We're in The Washington Post

The Washington Post this weekend ran a feature in its Sunday Source section on gardening in containers. They asked me, the kitchen gardener, to come up with a design for for an edible container scheme.

Gardening in containers is a great idea if you are short of space or want to be able to move your plants from one place to another. And if you can grow it in the ground, you can grow it in a pot. You can have an entire salad garden on your back deck. Containers are also good for tender plants that need to be taken in during the winter.

The Post reporter interviewed me for almost an hour on a range of gardening issues. You won't find much of that in the text, although several experts weigh in with good advice.

The one item we took strong exception to was the advice to feed container plants with a certain commercial product containing artificial fertilizers. We don't use artificial fertilizers, preferring things like compost, fish emulsion or alfalfa meal. Also peat moss, most of it harvested in bogs in Canada, is considered an unsustainable product. Look for potting mixes that contain alternatives.

Once you get to the story, you can find my container design by clicking on "Tailor-Made Gardens," then choose number 2. Take a look at all the designs. They're all very interesting. The reporter, Dan Zack, spent a lot of time on this and did a good job.

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