My husband, who works for the Georgia Department of corrections prefers me to say "Container Gardener", but my mom, my grandmother and my nanny told me there were flower "pots" so I'm a "pot" gardener.
I can't plant a garden in my yard for a couple a reasons. First of all, I love my trees too much and have LOTS of them. My home has shade until about 11 a.m. and then starts getting shade on the other side at about 2 p.m. Keeps the A/C from having to work too hard to keep me cool, so I'm not cutting down my shade trees. And secondly, it is not uncommon for me to get home and have several deer grazing around in my yard. And while I don't mind if they eat the grass, I'm not growing vegetables for the deer.
I generally start my plants from seed. My husband bought me a "pink" dogwood tree, well it has white blooms so when buying plants I think you might not know just what you are getting, so I buy seeds and plant them myself and have a better idea of what I am growing.
I also collect rain water from my roof for watering. It's quite easy to put a barrel at the end of a gutter or under the drip if you don't have a gutter. And I don't have to pay for watering my plants. Even a small rain will produce a large amount of water if you are catching it under a gutter.
I also limit the amount of garbage I send to the landfill with a compost area in my yard. Coffee grounds, egg shells, all peelings from veggies and fruits, grass clippings and soil from house plants that I have somehow killed all go in the pile and then I turn it ever so often and it makes great soil for using in future years of gardening. Over the years I have also used it to fill in some minor holes here and there from the original land clearing where old tree roots decaying have made little dips in the grass. The compost soil is great for filling in those spots to help grass spread.
I had my first tomato sandwich of the season today. Thick slices of tomato, just a dab of miracle whip, a dash a salt and lots of black pepper between two soft slices of Sara Lee wheat bread. Yummm, it was so good.
Roma tomatos make great sauce for soups and pasta. And it's so much better when it's fresh. And you get a so many of them from just a couple of plants.
So I'm saving money on my vegetables, saving time, because I just have to step out my door to pick them, saving the planet by composting. I can litterally have a entire season of peppers for the same amount of money to buy one red bell pepper at the super market. I also grow cucumbers and squash, but they aren't photo ready just yet.
So save yourself a little time and money and with with not much effort you can easily become a pot gardener too.
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