Micro-gardening - Inspiration and help needed

[Grog]

Thanks ladies for the advice!

I have never seen those round carrots, will look for them. I have yet to look at my seed catalogue - scared of getting sucked into it and to never return to my dissertation!

I should just add that I will be able to use some indoor space, perhaps even in the sun, on our parking spot. We have a tiny car so I'll be able to put a few pots there. Cherry tomatoes sound good! Would you buy a plant or start one from seedling yourself?

[buddha_bellies]

Is it almost that time of year again?

If you want tomatoes from seeds, you will have to start them now. Otherwise, do what a lot of us gardeners do- go buy the seedlings at VanDusen Plant sale at the last Sunday of April. I go line up at around 9:30am to get in at 10am. It's crazy there I must warn you. But I LOVE IT. You can buy all these heirloom tomatoes that you won't be able to get in a lot of garden centers. Unless you can wait until Farmer's Market in mid-May, you can buy some hard to find varieties there.

One cherry tomatoes I love is Sungold. It taste like pineapple... well, it's that sweet anyway.

But tomatoes need at least 8 hours of sun here. We're relatively cool on the coast here so any sun would help. And you'll need a min. of a 5 gallon pot. I have these black pots you can have if you don't mind the looks of it.

In the shade, arugula, oriental veggies and lettuce would do well. But there really isn't too many veggies you can grow in the shade, I'm afraid. But you can try some snow peas, which you can plant now. Mine gets only about 3 hours of direct sun and it seems to be do well.

The most important part in container gardening is make sure you choose a large pot. There's nothing worst then coming home late in the day to see everything dried up. You don't want to be a water slave.

How much space do you have? If you want veggies all winter inside, you'll need some grow lights. I set up some workshop lights underneath my dinning room table to start tomatoe seeds. But it's also a good way to grow cut-and-come-again baby lettuce, etc. If you go to GardenWeb.com, do a search on grow lights, you'll see a lot of people doing what I'm doing.

[jillm]

Last year I started some tomatoes from seed, and bought some seedlings and all of them did well. But these weren't in containers. I have grown tomatoes in containers and they've done OK, but never really flourished. It's hard to keep on top of watering them. (but I'm in IL, zone 5b, they were in full sun...our circumstances are different)

I don't know how they'd do in a container, but I'd like to recommend a cherry tomato I grew last year. Mexico Midget! It grew and produced all summer and had the tastiest little tomatoes!

[Norse]

Tomatoes and basil are sun lovers so you might have trouble with those. But they are so worth it if you can find a somewhat sunny and warm spot. One part of our garden gets a lot more shade and we have found that zucchini and other squash do fairly well there.

Good luck! A garden is so worth the time and effort.

[Norse]

Regarding the tomatoes, I usually wait until the Farmers' Market has them - they will vary from 6 - 12" tall. They arrive here around mid-May. For indoor pots, in addition to cherry you might have good luck with yellow and red grape (I love having the color contrast of the yellow tomatoes in our salads and dishes) and perhaps Roma.

[jillm]

I can't resist!

Here's Fausto with the Mexico Midget Cherry Tomatoes



He likes green beans too

[Biciclista]

I'm sorry, lol.
that green bean picture is GReAT!

if you try to grow beets and carrots in the house, all you're going to get is greens.
so just grow greens.

good luck.