January 3rd, 2010 by admin
We’re back! I am so very happy to be back on my blogs. I must apologize for those of you who came back early in 2009 and found the rather abrupt notification that we were no longer publishing.
I won’t bore you with the details, but health issues including some painful knee surgery simply required me to FOCUS on my health. But I am back, and will be with a bang.
The subjects we can cover together on Grow a Container Garden You will help us all flourish at the tasks to which we have decided to commit ourselves. I hope you will join me here at GaCG on a regular basis.
Please leave comments, suggestions, and especially questions. I will do my best to respond with useful information.
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December 31st, 2008 by admin
In a previous post I encouraged you to not to let winter discourage you from getting started with your container gardening efforts. Here’s a couple of pictures I took with my iPhone (a Christmas gift from my incredible wife, Debbie.)
They are pictures of the tuberous begonias my daughter, Suzy, has growing in the bay window of the tea room at Rose Arbour, our small business in Chester, VT. If you look at the second image you can see that it is snowing outside. The temperature outside is about 20°F and we’ve had about 5 to 6-inches of snow. Read the rest of this entry »
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December 31st, 2008 by admin
Sometimes, the urge to garden might be extinguished by your circumstances, such as living arrangements or space constrictions. If you live in an apartment, you can’t really operate a full garden because you don’t really have a yard! The best solution for this problem is to grow plants in pots. You can hang them, or just arrange them on your patio, window sill, or balcony. Just a few baskets or pots, and your whole living area will look much classier and nicer. Read the rest of this entry »
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December 10th, 2008 by admin
I am really excited about deciding to blog about container gardening. Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean we can’t garden. That’s one of the great advantages of growing in containers. I think we especially need plants and flowers around us during what can be the barren months outside.
Look for some great posts on creating containers, (Another one of those things winter is good for.), and I promise I will continue my post about my father’s Giant Green Thumb.
I hope you will return for more, and I send a great big THANK YOU if you add your comments and your own ideas. I am planning to have a container gardening forum just for the opportunity it provides for all of us to share ideas, questions, success, and even failures. PLEASE comment and feel free to include any info you find useful in your posts. All I ask is a trackback.
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December 8th, 2008 by admin
Hi there! My name is Jerry Nielsen. I live in Pasadena, CA part of the year and in Chester, VT part of the year. I only tell you this because it means I am familiar with a variety of gardening challenges and climates, and I have successfully grown container gardens in all of them.
I grew up in San Luis Obispo, CA. On many weekends, however, we would drive down US Highway 101 to Solvang, a lovely little Danish American community about 60 miles to the south. That’s where my earliest experiences with gardening and gardens took place. My grandfather owned a lot which was a full block deep. Behind the house, which he built himself, were two gardens. As you faced the backyard, the vegetables and fruits were on the left, and the flower garden was on the right.
My grandmother felt that she was called to visit the sick and elderly, and she always took them flowers, and sometimes vegetables and fruit, to brighten their lives. That’s mainly what the flower garden was for. Before he moved to California and became a carpenter, my grandfather was a farmer in Iowa. The care of the kitchen garden had been an important part of his daily routine, and he simply was never willing to give it up. He told me on so many occasions, “Jerry, people need to get their hands in the dirt to be happy. We all need a connection to the ground.”
He was an incredibly gifted gardener. Anything he planted and cared for just grew wonderfully. Manure from the chicken coop was cooled off in the compost pile, grass clippings from the front lawn never went to waste, and potato peels and unused lettuce leaves went right back into the soil via the compost pile. I learned to love the garden at a very early age.
My grandmother had a little sign she hung just outside the door to the garden. You’ve probably seen it somewhere.
“The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is neaer God’s heart in a garden
Than any place else on earth.”
In the next post, I will write about my Dad, and his giant green thumb. Please come back and join me for the rest of this ride. We’ll have a lot of fun together, and I hope to hear about your gardening influences. Until then . . .
May there be peace in your garden . . .
Jerry
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December 8th, 2008 by admin
Grow a container garden! Yep! That’s what I said. Why? Well, I can think of a multitude of reasons you might want to do so, but most of them come back to my belief that growing plants in soil, even if you don’t have a yard, is good for the soul. You know, the human species has been connected to the land a lot longer than it has been connected to the cell phone. We need contact with the planet however we may be able to make that happen.
Here are a few other reasons you may be interested in growing a container garden.
- You live in an apartment or condominium. You don’t have a yard in which you can plant a garden. On this blog, I am going to show youi the ways that you can use the space available on your balcony, patio, or front entrance way to grow plants that are beautiful an might even feed you fresh produce.
- You have a house, but it is on a small lot. Perhaps the little bit of yard you do have is covered with brick or concrete, something all too common in urban environments. I’m going to suggest ways to cover those hard surfaces with beautiful plants and decorative containers.
- You have neither the tools or time to dig up sections of a yard, plant a lawn, flower garden or vegetable garden. Large garden plots are time consuming and can definitely require a major physical effort.
- You are physically unable to dig and rake and hoe a large garden plot, but you can put soil in a pot or planter and sow seeds or place bedding plants.
If any of these reasons have prevented you from experiencing the benefits and enjoyment of growing plants. whether flowers or vegetables, even though you have been longing to do so, you have come to the right place. In the coming days and weeks, I am going to teach you how to grow a container garden. You’ll learn about plants, soil, and the best containers in which to grow them. All that . . . and much much more.
Please comeback! Visit often! Comment on what you read! Share you own successes and ideas. We’ll all be better for it!
May there peace in your garden . . .
Jerry
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Hello and welcome! Hi there! My name is Jerry Nielsen. I've been a gardener and gardening teacher for many years, and I have successfully grown container gardens the Northeast and Southwest. Please share your comments, and take a moment to sign up for my RSS feed.