WSMV Nashville - 2015 Creative Spaces

Easy edibles
Growing in containers right outside
the kitchen door, these vegetables
look too pretty to be real. but they
are—and they’re delicious too.
Edible Garden
Considerations

Begin with a large, handsome container.

Pamela places tall cobalt blue ceramic pots that have small footprints on the deck. The deep pots have ample room to support root growth. Repetition of these pots brings unity and cohesion to the deck garden’s design.

Think outside the box. Pamela hangs steel window baskets along the deck railing. Holes in the coconut fiber linings of the baskets allow plantings to mature into blankets of color.

Consider the hardware. This savvy gardener insists that even the hardware on her small deck needs to be pretty. Instead of the usual tomato cages, she uses steel obelisks and trellises.

Select vegetables, herbs, and flowers suited to containers. Choose varieties that won’t outgrow their container or take up too much space on a deck or patio. Look for varieties with “dwarf,” “compact,” “ patio,” or “pixie” in their names. These plants have been developed for their smaller stature but yield full-size produce.

Choose quality potting mix. Pamela recommends using a name-brand potting mix and avoiding bags with “soil” in the name, which are too heavy for containers. “If it says potting mix,” she says, “you are going to get something that is pretty good.”

Feed your plants. Mix organic, time-release fertilizer granules into the potting mix at planting time or apply a water-soluble plant food every other week.

Pamela Crawford loves flowers, so when she decided to grow vegetables on her deck, she knew she wanted them to be as pretty as any blooms might be. The results are eye-popping as well as productive. Best of all, her techniques will work for anyone gardening with plenty of sun and enough determination to bring them to life. “The most important thing is to use a large enough container,” she says. And she doesn’t stop with vegetables. Flowers are essential for making her potted edible gardens overflow with color.