Saladzilla
Make your own container salad garden

A great vegetable garden doesn't require acres of land. As a matter of fact, all of the fixings for a mouthwatering salad can be grown in a container on a deck or patio. Gardenzilla purveyor of classic garden urns and containers, has a wide range of pots that will provide a lovely home for your edible garden. Sizable pots are often extremely heavy; Gardenzilla offers a solution to cumbersome pots with their fiberware line. Designed to look like cast iron or bronze these containers are ideal aesthetically as well for practicality.

It is possible, with a little planning to keep a patio tub producing salad vegetables from spring through fall. To achieve this, a large container that offers plenty of root room and efficient moisture retention is essential. Match a pot that has plenty of room for plants to grow with the right soil mix and you have a recipe for the perfect container salad garden. Simply, follow these tips for a delicious salad right out of the garden.

• Plant your container salad garden in late February or early March in a sheltered area against a warm house wall. The container can be moved gradually into the open as the weather warms. Conventional salad vegetables like lettuces, onions and parsley are hardy plants that won't be ruined by light frosts.

• Make sure there are drainage holes at the bottom before filling a large pot or patio tub (that is at least 16 to 18 inches wide) with soil. Then place a drainage layer at least two inches (five cm) deep. Use composted wood shavings, fir bark and perlite, or peat and perlite then add the soil mix.

• Start with a lightweight planting mix and add about half as much sterilized soil. Place a layer of bagged, processed manure and a light scattering of fertilizer about half way up the side of the pot. This layer will act as a feeding station for the plant roots as they develop. Press the soil mix gently into the container filling it to within about an inch from the top.

• Add a little vermiculite for enhanced moisture retention and perlite for aeration, and several handfuls of fertilizer in each wheelbarrow load of soil mix. For fertilizer choose a slow-release, natural-source type.

• For a really attractive salad garden plant both green and red leaf lettuces.. The great thing about putting leaf lettuce in container gardens is that you can harvest continuously from the outer leaves, allowing you to keep the lettuce and eat it too. Add a few onion sets (tiny starter onion bulbs, available at garden centers) for quick green onions, and a parsley plant or two.

• Water the soil well with a solution of fish or seaweed fertilizer, or a combination of the two. Place small patches of spinach and radish seeds over available spaces. Cover the seeds with a thin layer of soil mix and press down lightly.

• As the season progresses and plants are harvested from the container salad garden, add a bit of fertilizer and some fresh soil mix to the emptied spaces and replace with more lettuce transplants and onions.

• For a more colorful combination, in April or May add a few nasturtium seeds into shallow soil.This will give you beautiful edible flowers and brighten up both your garden and your salad.

• Move the salad garden to a cool location during the hottest part of the summer.

• In early August sow more spinach for autumn salads. In early autumn add flowering cabbage or kale plants.

Pictured urn above is planted with Bronze Fennel, Orach Leaf, Edible Mustard, Butter Crunch and Romain Lettuce, Purple Basil, Curly Parsley, and Catmint