If you want fresh organic veggies and flowers but don’t have a garden space, you’re in luck. Organic container gardening makes it possible for you and in fact, it’s even easier than having an organic garden plot.

Containers

A garden container is anything that you can put soil into but some organic gardeners prefer to use natural containers, such as those made from wood or clay. You can put a plant in an old toilet, a worn-out shoe, a milk carton or any other container that will hold dirt and won’t fall apart when it gets wet.

You have to make sure that the container will drain, only few plants like too much water.

You can drain a few drainage holes in the bottom of your container, if it is needed. Add about an inch of gravel or broken clay pots to the bottom of the pot or if you want you can also put a layer of torn up newspaper or leaf mold on top of the gravel.
The gravel helps in ensuring a good drainage while the leaf mold helps in retaining the water so the soil stays slightly moist.

Soil

Soil is the main source of life in whatever kind of gardening. With organic container gardening, you have to start out with organic, living soil.

Since you don’t have any subsoil, you need organic soil that will hold water without letting the plant’s roots get too wet. The best way to do this is to add peat moss to your organic soil. Compost and composted manure, mixed with peat moss, make great soil for organic container gardening, or it could be a straight peat moss.

Plants

Just like in regular organic gardening, you can plant beans, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, herbs, eggplant or anything you want to as long as it is planted in containers. Make sure that the space and containers you use will be appropriate for the size of your plant. For instance, zucchini takes up the same amount of room on your patio that it needs a space and pot big enough for its growth.

Technically, organic seed and/or plants should be use for organic container gardening.  Unless you’re planning to sell organic produce, however, the choice is yours.

Organic Practices

Organic container gardening is well suited for organic gardening practices, especially where pest control is concerned.  It is much easier to get rid of pests from your plants than it is in the large garden. You could just pick off hookworms on your tomatoes and you can easily wash each leaf and stem of a plant on your container garden. Problems with cutworms is most likely won’t happen inorganic container gardening. Slugs will still go for your plants and diatomaceous earth will still deter them but just sprinkle it on the surface of the soil in the pot and these gone.

With organic container gardening, you can even use insect control. Just catch a few ladybugs or a praying mantis egg sac and put them on the plants that have insect infestations.  Ladybugs will take charge in getting rid of the aphids out of your plants.

There are many benefits you can gain from having an organic container gardening and the most rewarding of it all is that you could feed your family with plenty of healthy organic produce. If you have a sheltered area and can provide enough light, you can have vegetables from organic container gardening all year round.