Ensure a successful container garden with some basic gardening skills. If you start with the containers, make sure any garden pots made from porous materials (such as wood or terracotta) are sealed with a quality water sealant on the inside of the pot. Otherwise, a lot of the water meant for your plants will be soaked up by the pots.

Watering Your Plants

It’s just as important not to underwater as it is not to over water. To catch any extra water and keep it from rotting your patio or deck, most garden pots will have a saucer or bowl placed underneath. You should try to water your container garden by filling up the saucers. This is the best way to water as it help you avoid over watering and spilling the water over the top of the saucer. By doing this, the water will feed the roots of your plants by seeping up through the hole in the bottom of the garden pot.

Another method of watering is to water your plants at the surface. If you do, however, make sure you fill about a cup at a time and watch how much water ends up in the saucer. You want to avoid overfilling the saucer. Spraying your plants with water from a hand sprayer is always welcome by your houseplants. Try to avoid using hard water though so calcium won’t build up on the leaves.

Nourishment For Your Plants

Because garden pots are generally small, nutrients don’t last much more than five or six weeks in most potting soils. Vital nutrients in the soil will need to be replenished with plant food. It usually comes in either a granular form or a liquid form. For really low maintenance, it is recommended that you use slow-release granules since they last a long time and they keep a steady supply of food going to the plants.

Pest Control

Systemic and Contact are the two main types of insecticides. Systemic is poured right onto the soil and is then absorbed into the soil to the root system of the plant and right on up through the leaves. This type of insecticide works best for bugs under the soil that are hard to get to and for leaf eaters as they ingest the poison when they eat the leaves.

Contact insecticide works by spraying the poison directly onto the bugs. This method works rather quickly and you may need to repeat depending on how much infestation is going on.

You are sure to have a thriving container garden with a small amount of monitoring and loving care.

David Haines has been working in gardens since his early childhood and has always been interested in educating others on garden pot and landscaping techniques. If you would like to know more about container gardening, visit AllGardenPots.com