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Vegetable gardening in containers provides gardeners who have limited space the chance to benefit from fresh vegetables. All you need is a sunny patio to grow your favorite veggies. When it comes to the most suitable types of vegetables for container gardening, your choice depends on the zone of your location. You can easily purchase seeds online or from your garden center and nursery in your area.

Aside from determining the best types of vegetables to grow, it is also essential to know the basics about planting vegetables in containers.

Containers. Any type of pot or container will do for your little garden but it is important that the container is lightweight because you have to move it around. You can add wheels to your container or just place them on a cart with wheels to make the moving easier especially if an unanticipated spring frost is predicted or if a severe weather is coming.

Soil. You can purchase bagged soil at your local nursery. Make sure to go for a lightweight soil mixture that can sustain mature plants and provide nutrients to your vegetables.

Sunlight. Your vegetables require full sunlight (6 or more hours everyday). There are some vegetable varieties such as radishes, lettuce and chard that require less sunlight but it is recommended to put the containers in direct sunlight.

Drainage. The containers must have holes in order to let excess water to drain. You can find a lot of lovely resin or plastic planters at your local garden center or nursery that don't have holes in them. Using a drill, just add 3 or 4 holes at the bottom of the planters. Before putting the soil mixture, it is recommended to add a level of pebbles at the base to help with the drainage.

Fertilizer. Expect the fertilizer to be drained quickly every time you water your containers. If you use lighter mixes, you need to fertilize more frequently. It is recommended to employ a thinned liquid fertilizer or liquid seaweed or liquid fish emulsion. However, it is important to note that your plants require different types of nutrients so check the descriptions on the fertilizer to ensure that they have a balanced and complete solution including trace elements.

Watering. A lot of vegetables require a lot of moisture throughout the whole growing season. In addition, if the container plants are placed in exposed areas, they tend to lose moisture rapidly so make sure to water them more often.

Vegetable varieties. When choosing the types of vegetables for the vegetable garden in your patio, it is important to consider what your family loves to eat. In addition, choose those that can grow suitably in a restricted space. There are a lot of gardeners who benefit from growing tomatoes because of the fact that home-produced tomatoes taste a lot better than those bought at the supermarket. You can try the following vegetables for your container gardening:

• Carrots
• Eggplants
• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Peppers
• Radishes
• Melons
• Tomatoes
• Herbs
• Green beans
• Green onions
• Broccoli
• Spinach
• Garlic
• Squash

Even if you live in a small apartment, you can still engage in gardening and enjoy fresh vegetables anytime. By using your balcony or your sunny deck, growing different varieties of vegetables will be as easy as A, B, C.

Gardening is great for relaxation and spending time with the family. To find out more and learn how to grow a vegetable garden visit http://foopages.com/

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Many vegetable gardeners out there such as yourself grow more fruits and vegetables then you can consume before they start to decay or rot. While giving away a portion of what you grow, whether it's to a friendly neighbor or simply a donation to a local soup kitchen or food pantry, is a good thing, you can also preserve much of your harvest for the months in which you are not able to grow in abundance or at all.

While many methods for preservation exist, there are two common ones that have been around for quite some time and are becoming more popular every day. You can tell when something is becoming popular when more and more stores carry a line of products to handle the tasks of that "something".

In this case that "something" is food preservation and the two popular methods for handling such a task are boiling water canning and pressure canning. Each serves a specific purpose, which i will get to in a moment, and both are valuable as well as easy to do. They each require some basic equipment, a little know how.

Boiling-Water Canning
The method of boiling water canning is used when foods are high in acid, such as lemons, peaches, tomatoes, plums and so on. These, and many other items like them, have a pH level at or below 4.6, meaning they have a high acidic content.

This method is conducted by bringing a pot of water to boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit and submerging jars filled with whatever you are preserving into the boiling water and letting them sit there for a period of time.

High acid foods are processed using this method. Sometimes, recipes call for adding lemon juice so as to increase the acidity of the mixture. The combination of the high acid and the temperature at which the jars are boiled at result in destroying molds, yeasts, various forms of bacteria and inactivate some enzymes.

I will talk about pressure canning in a moment, however, never use the boiling water method to preserve foods that are not high in acid such as beans, peas or corn. For those items you need a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit to destroy bacterial spores that exist in low acid foods, and that can only be obtained with pressure canning.

Pressure Canning
That brings me to the second method of canning, pressure canning. The only way you are going to get the water in your pot up to 240 degrees Fahrenheit is through pressure canning. This temperature is important because it destroys all bacteria, spores and toxins that low acid foods produce.

Besides the popular varieties of veggies mentioned earlier that fall into the category needed to be pressure canned, okra, carrots, beets and turnips are a few more. These veggies are above the 4.6 pH level.

There is a special piece of equipment used for this method called a pressure canner. No surprise there right? The basic items of this canner are the base, a lid, the gauge (dial or weighted) and a rack. The total cost for this canning package, which is sold as a complete set (although you can buy replacement pieces), runs anywhere from $60 to $100.

The way it works is to submerge your jars of low acidic foods into the base and place them on the rack inside, place the lid on your canner and use the gauge to monitor the pressure and temperature. The gauge will release small amounts of steam to maintain the proper pressure inside the container.

Be sure to follow the maintenance instructions that come with your pressure canner. The gauge which measures the pressure in your canner, should be tested for accuracy (dial gauge only) usually once per year and replaced if the reading is off by 5psi (pounds per square inch) or more. A weighted gauge does not need to be tested for accuracy but must be replaced if there is any damage to it.

Some helpful utensils such as a jar lifter, jar funnel bubble remove, headspace tool and lid wand, make canning that much easier as each of these utensils can be used in both methods.

I would recommend starting off with something easy. I canned peaches as my first run through the canning process. It was easy because I was able to use the boiling water method, which I had the proper items needed already in my home. Then I moved to tomatoes and pickles still using the boiling water method and finally beans doing some pressure canning.

Like anything else it takes practice. Don't be afraid to make a few mistakes, or in my case, messes, along the way, and you will be fine.

About the Author
Mike Podlesny is the owner of Mike the Gardener Enterprises, LLC, an online vegetable gardening retailer of seeds and supplies, as well as the exclusive home for the Seeds of the Month Club.

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Although the temperature still feels like summer, now is the time for Southern California gardeners to plant cool season vegetables for a spring harvest.

Prepare Soil for Fall Garden: After the spring and summer growing season, garden soil needs a pick-me-up. Remove nonproducing vegetable plants, loosen the garden soil and mix in a two-inch layer of organic compost. This is particularly important if the garden has clay or sandy soil. This will get your garden ready for fall planting.

Make Additions to Your Vegetable Garden: Some vegetables thrive in cooler weather. After your summer vegetables have run their course, plant peas, fava beans, kale, leeks beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, radish, carrots, celery, potatoes and winter zucchini. You will see vegetables by early spring if not sooner depending on weather conditions. Tomato varieties such as Champion, Glacier, Taxi and Siberia can be planted in September. By mid-to late-October, you will be able to harvest a full crop. Pick the fruit a bit early and let them ripen indoors.

Plant a Winter Flower Garden: Professionally landscaped gardens are blooming all year long in Southern California. There is no reason why backyard gardens can't do the same. Warm Septembers enable gardeners to plant flowers for fall and winter blooms. These include chrysanthemums, sweet peas, pansies, calendula, snapdragons and sweet alyssum. When planting from seed, keep seedbeds moist, especially just after planting. Mulch the soil lightly, keeping the mulch an inch away from plant stems. Add mulch again in winter if frost is an issue. The mulch will retain daytime heat and keep the soil warm.

Feed and Water Citrus: Citrus trees should be fed in spring and fall. Use a fertilizer especially formulated for citrus trees. These fertilizers include nitrogen with some phosphorous. Wilted, cupped or falling leaves could mean moisture stress from hot winds. Make sure you water your citrus trees deeply.

Prune hedges and shrubs: After a summer of growth, hedges and shrubs can quickly become unkempt.Prune long straggly or dying stems. This will prompt new growth before winter.

Plant Fruit Trees: The best times to plant fruits trees are in spring and fall. The advantages for a fall planting is that since the tree is in dormancy, all of its energy is focused on establishing its root system--making for a stronger tree by spring To reduce transplant shock, dig a hole for planting at least three times the size of the plant's root ball is wide, but only as deep as its roots. Don't plant the tree too low in the ground to allow for some settling. Firmly pack the soil around the tree to eliminate air pockets. Cover the soil with mulch to keep in moisture and help moderate winter's unpredictable soil temperatures.

Bill Camarillo is CEO of Agromin, an Oxnard, California-based manufacturer of premium soil products for the agriculture and horticulture trades and for consumer use. Each month, Agromin receives and processes hundreds of thousands of tons of urban wood and green waste. Agromin then uses a safe, organic and scientific system to formulate its soil products from the processed recycled green materials. http://www.agromin.com/.

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This article is a relaxed, but informative introduction to people who are quite new to gardening and are looking to start growing vegetables. It provides step-by-step instructions for beginners which guide the reader through selecting a suitable growing space to choosing plants. It also provides some general and specific tips for vegetable growing and highlights some of its benefits in terms of saving money and improved relaxation.

Now you know what vegetables you want to grow you need to buy some seeds. There are many places that stock theme, anywhere from garden centers to news agents. Typical vegetable seeds are quite cheap, usually under two or three pounds. However, the number of seeds that come in a packet varies significantly based on the type of vegetable. For example, a packet of carrot seeds may contain about a hundred seeds whereas a packet of bean seeds may only contain about twenty. This variation is usually proportional to the seed's rate of germination, in effect far fewer carrot seeds germinate than bean seeds.

Once you have the seeds you would like to grow the next step are to plant them. This is usually the most labor intensive part of the process. The majority of seed packets will have basic instructions for sowing, maintaining and harvesting the crop you will hopefully produce. If you don't have any instructions to hand then there is plenty of useful information on the Internet and your local library is also a good resource. There are many different types of vegetables and the growing requirements and difficulties associated with each of them could fill several books, so rather than addressing all of these the rest of this article is going to focus on general growing tips.

One of the most fundamental elements of a plant's success in its environment is the soil that it's grown in. Identifying your soil type and making sure that it's compatible with your plants can make a real difference to their growth. Your soil type is not completely fixed though, adding some fertilizer from a garden center can alter its properties and make a noticeable difference in a plants health. This subject goes hand-in-hand with feeding plants as they grow. It's important to keep a careful eye on the plant feed that is being given to vegetables that you plan to eat, what you put on the roses may not be quite so good when eaten! There are several special, organic feeds out there for vegetable plants that are very good. An interesting experiment is to buy a few and try them out on a couple of the same plants to see the differences in performance.

One of the biggest difficulties with growing vegetables is other animals eating them before you do. There are two main ways to prevent this: growing your vegetables in your house, or growing them inside a greenhouse. Growing vegetables in your house is possible, especially if you have a conservatory, and can be a nice project to do with young children. However, the soil and dead leaves that inevitably make their way onto the carpet and throughout the house discourage most people from doing this on any scale. Greenhouses are an excellent alternative as they allow you to protect your plants from almost any pest, however they are expensive and not always a viable solution.

Cristopher K. Abbott is an avid organic gardening advocacy and photographer. To learn more about gardening, visit his website at: best organic gardening

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