I had not intended to post another item on containers this week but this morning came across a fascinating article about an American design for a self-watering container. Whether we’re trying to be more responsible in our use of water or simply need to be able to leave our plants for a while to look after themselves, self-watering is an enormous advantage.

Drip systems fed from a water reservoir are one possibility but involve lengths of tubing draped around the place. Some people don’t mind that but others find it too fiddly. Another possibility is the kind of drip bottle illustrated here (Click here or on the picture to buy the screw-on watering spikes through Amazon.co.uk). The difficulty with these is that some people feel that the accumulation of plastic bottles can look rather like litter, and to last several days you need quite large bottles. Having said that many people like this solution.

Ray Newstead’s “Earthtainer” design is certainly worth looking into, especially for tomato growing where regular and large volumes of water are normally involved. The Earthtainer is not available for purchase but if you go to the above link you can download the design details to make your own – although there may need to be some adaptation to allow for different materials being available in the UK. If anyone has done this why not let us know by telling the story in the comments box below.

Bag garden photo courtesy of Appropedia

In areas where there is little opportunity to grow food, such as a shanty town, or where there is serious danger of land being forcibly expropriated as soon as anything productive is developed, a bag garden, or sack garden, is often a viable alternative. Bags can be picked up and moved whereas land cannot.

The author of the article calculates that a typical one cubic metre food-aid sack, when filled with a mix of stones and earth will give 5 sq. metres of “farmable surface”. There’s a nice set of instructions on how best to make a sack garden.

I quite like the idea and may try it even here in Cumbria – which is not your typical impoverished developing economy but I like playing with novel ideas in the container garden. Now I’ve got to find a couple of old sacks from somewhere. Plastic sacks are easily found but I’d like to use something more ‘natural’ looking.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a garden, by which I mean an area of bare earth, but most people have at least a small amount of space where plants can be grown in containers of various types and sizes. It may be a balcony or a patio, a small paved yard, a wall top of a window ledge. All these, not to mention vertical wall spaces, can be filled with colour.

You may choose to fill your container garden with annuals from seed or seedlings and change them every year, or to design for the longer term with perennials of many kinds. You can experiment with different colour mixes, and also with combinations of different size and form, using some as background to the others. If you want colour for many months you can gradually during the summer replace pots containing early flowering plants with some in which you’ve planted later flowering varieties so as to maintain interest around the season.

What containers, and where to put them?

What about the containers themselves? Well, provided there’s a drainage outlet in the base you can use just about anything. And that’s one of the attractions of container gardening, being able to improvise. I like to use terracotta pots for the bulk of my displays but you do have to remember that they lose moisture much faster than glazed pots and therefore need more regular watering. They also soak up water from damp compost so make sure you soak them well in a tub of water before planting anything in them.

Not all patio or paved yard areas get a lot of sun. If yours does then you’ll be able to grow a wide range of colourful spring and summer flowers. Shady areas, though, call for a different approach. Shade-loving plants tend on the whole to be less colourful but the enormous variety within the colour green, combined with a vast array of shapes and textures, make it possible to create very interesting displays. Why not try some hostas; they come in very different sizes.

What about other places? A pot by your front door can give a warm welcome to a visitor, but make it bold enough to be noticed. In some areas it may be necessary to have a pot so large that it can’t easily be carried away, but in more secure neighbourhoods you could use a group of pots of different sizes {preferably in groups of odd, not even, numbers) combining upright and trailing plants. Make a statement. Make the display spectacular.

… and here’s Alan Titchmarsh

Here’s Alan’s book: How to Garden: Container Gardening

Container gardening with vegetables

So far I’ve only referred to flower and green foliage planting but how about a container-based vegetable garden? Tomatoes grown in containers are an annual feature of many patio gardens, and potatoes can be grown in large plastic bags as well as in more solid containers. Last year I got some good onions from growing them singly in a massed array of 6-inch plastic pots in a large tray placed on an old table against a sunny wall. It’s so easy, also, to grow a selection of herbs in pots on a stand or a windowsill just outside the kitchen door.

Don’t allow your lack of a bare-earth garden to stop you from growing your unique display of container-grown plants, whether for flowers, foliage or food. With a little imagination and experimentation you’ll soon have a container garden that others will envy.

Container gardening supplies

• Thompson & Morgan – Grow in Containers

With the arrival of Spring I've noticed a resurgence of visitors to my (now) small fuchsias site. (I say “now small” because I've pruned back it viciously ready for a rebuild which is now starting). Interestingly one of the most popular pages is the one on Fuchsia 'Lady Boothby', often called the “climbing” fuchsia – which in my opinion is not technically correct but it does grow vigorously and long and can be trained against a trellis or some other support.

Then this evening I came across an item on Emma Cooper's blog about her newly arrived fuchsia plants in which she refers to 'Lady Boothby' as one of the varieties that might well make good fuchsia jam. Now even after growing fuchias for well over twenty years I've never before heard of fuchsia jam. It sounds interesting. I wonder what it tastes like. Emma says:

“I have always loved fuchsias, but my interest these days is more in the fact that they grow edible berries. Although they are edible, some are apparently nicer (and larger) than others, depending on the species and the variety….”
More at New Plants: Hardy Fuchsias – Blog – Emma Cooper

I'm going to check this out during the coming season, and see whether I can grow enough to make jam production a feasible proposition. For starters in my research I've found two recipes on the Powells Wood Garden blog, with a few more tips about preferred varieties

“Single-bloom fuchsias produce more fruit than double-bloom fuchsias. Fuchsia berries can taste very peppery to very sweet, almost like a kiwi. The berries of Fuchsia procumbens, the groundcover fuchsia, are my personal favorite; they get very large and are very sweet….”
More at Fuchsias 101 – How to Eat Fuchsia Berries « PowellsWood Garden

So here we go, not only growing the wonderful flowers but maybe some late summer afternoon enjoying their jam. Clotted cream and fuchsia jam on fresh scones … ?

Buy Fuchsia ‘Lady Boothby’

• Thompson & Morgan

I’ve two items today. The first is a a link to a marvellous post with some remarkable garden photography. I wish I could get shots half as good as these from my garden visits. Here it is, from the Galloping Gardener. Take a look at the full article. It’s special.

Last week I spent a day at Great Dixter with Andrew Lawson, the celebrated English garden photographer. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn from a man who has captured more different gardens on film than I will ever have the chance to see and to hear a little of his story, as well as having the chance to listen to his advice on taking better photographs. Andrew knew and worked with Christopher Lloyd (who created the garden at Dixter) on numerous occasions, and had many anecdotes about both the man and his garden….
More at “Being at the right place at the right time” with Andrew Lawson

My second clip is from the RHS, one of a series of articles on new additions to the RHS Plantfinder – Rose Wollerton Old Hall. Chris Beardshaw described the new garden at this 16th century house as “Possibly the most beautiful personal garden to have been created in the last 25 years”. The rose named after it looks from its photograph to be no less excellent. Here’s the extract. Do click through to the full article.

More upright in growth than many English Roses, reaching about 5ft/1.5m high and 3ft/90cm across, and mostly thorn-free, Wollerton Old Hall makes an ideal specimen in a mixed border. It was named for the garden at the 16th century house of the same name, one of the finest recently made gardens in the country….
More at Rose Wollerton Old Hall: New in the RHS Plantfinder

That’s it for a day or two. Enjoy this selection.

Up in the Eden Valley I can’t say that we’re noticing much of a drought, but many Gardening Notes readers are not up here in the rainy northwest. Anyway, I came across a bit of very good advice in the Guardian’s gardening column recently.

How gardeners can beat the great British drought
by Graham Rice.

Step away from that hosepipe, he says. There are plenty of ways to save water while keeping gardens green:

Don’t just throw your hands in the air, put your head under the pillow and pray for rain. Pray for rain, yes, but keep in mind three things.

One: Plants are resilient, they want to grow, they're desperate to grow so they can create a new generation. They’re determined not to let a water shortage get in the way of reaching maturity.
Two: Choose drought tolerant plants,
Three: There are plenty of things you can do to help them.

More at How gardeners can beat the great British drought

I’ll let you link through to the article for the details, but must just mention the easy bit – using the washing up water. How many of these things we’ll need to do up here I don’t know, but it’s good stewardship to conserve water anyway, drought or no drought.

A very short post today – almost like a micro-blog (or “Tweet”).

There’s a very good summary of how to grow tomatoes on the RHS blog.

If you’re not confident in your tomato-growing skills take a look at it. And don’t forget to order your tomato seeds in good time.

Last year, for the first time, I made a serious attempt at growing potatoes in black polythene bags. I'd tried before a few years ago but it wasn't a serious attempt.  This time I looked after them better and got a fairly good yield.

I was interested, therefore, to come across this afternoon an article on the blog of Kitchen Garden Magazine discussing a wide range of much more thorough experiments.

I didn't measure my results so I can't say what weights I got, but from memory would say that I did better than some of the experiments referred to in the article.

This year I'll be having another go, and must read a post by OneStrawRob befoe I decide on the best (or at least a promising) approach.

As we come to the end of the northern hemisphere growing season tomato growers inevitably have green fruits still on the vine, and need to get them off before the severe frosts arrive. But what to so with them? Scanning a few web sites this morning I came across this great blog post on YouGrowGirl.com and thought I’d share it here.

Preserving Green Tomatoes
The tomato season is ending quickly. As of today, I don’t foresee many more ripe tomatoes coming off of the vine. … In an attempt to squeeze a few more ripe fruit from the harvest I’ve been nestling those that are nearly there inside paper bags. … In my experience, not all green tomatoes will ripen by this method. The fruit that is really young and underdeveloped tends to go wrinkly and rot rather than ripening, so I reserve this process for the tomatoes that have a blush of colour and save the darker green fruit for eating fresh and preserving. …..
>> Read the full article here >>

Canning Tomatoes – video

On a similar theme, but this time red ripe tomsatoes, here’s a video from Anthonys Italian Food. I like his style, down to earth and practical, nothing super-sophisticated; just the kind of presentation most of us can take in.

Well, gardeners have been warned, here in the North of England, that arctic weather is almost upon us. So that means I’ll need to get outside into the garden and do some physical work. I’ve been shrinking from that for the past few weeks since I bent over carelessly, picked up one of my potato growing bags, and wrenched my back. Now, however, I simply must get out out there.