Container Gardening Drainage – How Vital Is It For The Healthy Growth Of Plants?

How frustrating! You would love to grow plants and more plants, but outside space around your house is limited! The solution for this is offered in the form of container gardening, which requires less space and less maintenance. Unfortunately, “less” maintenance is often mistaken for “no” maintenance at all, and people are then left wondering why their plants refuse to survive! A crucial aspect of this sort of gardening is “container gardening drainage”, which we will go into details about in the succeeding paragraphs.

Except for the prospect of growing huge trees, there is really no limitation as to what type of plants can be grown in containers! A number of vegetables can be produced in these containers, and so can a variety of flowers. But for all these plants to have healthy, long lives, an adequate container gardening drainage system for removing excess water is vital. Once the plants have been given all that they need, you find an enchanting panorama unfolding right in front of your eyes!

Why is container garden drainage so important?

Roots begin to rot if they are surrounded by too much of water; the soil in the container can absorb only so much! For it is not possible to know exactly how much water has to be poured in each time you are watering the plants.

The standard containers available in the market, such as plastic pots, already come with drainage holes placed at the bottom. But what if you would like to get creative and use anything and everything around the house as a holder for plants? Like for instance, logs that have been hollowed out, boots that are worn out and no longer needed, galvanized tubs and buckets. You can think of many more, of course! Anything will do for a container or pot, large or small. The condition is, have a good drainage system in place. It is recommended that the drainage holes be placed at the bottom as well as on the sides.

The type of container selected for a particular plant will decide the tools that are needed to drill the gardening drainage holes. A metal pot or container would require a drill to prepare the holes. It is far simpler and faster to make holes in aluminium containers with the help of a punch. If choosing wood containers, go back to the drill. A drill can be used on ceramic pots too, but with tremendous care.

Whatever be the choice of container or pot, the container gardening drainage system has to be a great one!

Another point to be taken into consideration for container gardening drainage is – where are the pots or containers going to be exactly placed? If the drainage system results in water getting pooled outside the container instead of inside the container, it serves absolutely no purpose at all! The roots are going to rot anyway and your plants are gone! So it is best that the container garden as a whole is placed on a number of bricks or blocks, leaving adequate space for the water to flow out and away from the containers.

A Raised Garden Bed Design Will Improve Plant Growth

Using a raised garden bed design is a good way to get a lot more space out of a limited amount of garden space. By raising each plant up instead of out, more crops can grow at the same time. Some plants prefer to grow in the raised garden bed design. Plants like squash and cucumbers grow great in a raised garden bed design.

Strawberries, also, prefer the raised beds. If kept in their own space, they will produce large amounts of vegetables and fruit, keeping the weeds down where the plants are. Because the raised beds allow for each plant, there is little to no space for weeds to take over.

Weeds will however, find the space in any garden and they need to be tended to in the same amount of time spent on the garden itself. If left to grow in between the raised beds, they will soon seed and take over the garden. When they are left to grow, they also become tough and sometimes thorny, making it extra hard to remove them.

The best way to get them out is to pick them when they pass the surface of the soil. This is why a raised garden bed design is so useful. When seeing plants that are small but outside of the raised beds, a person doesn’t have to wait to see if it is a weed or a plant. Pick anything outside of the raised beds. Wait a little longer to pull weeds in the raised beds just to make sure it doesn’t belong there.

Protected Raised Garden Bed Design

If the gardener’s home is in the northern parts of the country, a raised garden bed design can actually insulate root systems during the winter. Some plants will return every year and reproduce more fruit or vegetables. An example of this is strawberries. The raised garden bed design leaves soil to insulate the roots. They will come back year after year as long as the people put down a little mulch at the end of the season. The same holds true for rhubarb plants. Take care of them and the person will be rewarded with a new crop every year.

In closing, a raised garden bed design is an excellent way to keep a garden healthy without using any sprays or pesticides. If someone has never gardened with raised beds, this coming year is a great time to begin. Talk to neighbors who might use this design or go to a nursery where the workers are experienced with this type of garden. They will be happy to help a person plan out the space available. Just make sure that the person has a drawing with the dimensions on it and this year’s garden will be the best one yet.