Container Gardening

 This week on In the Garden with UC Master Gardeners, UC Master Gardener host Katrina Kirkeby talks to MG Teena Spindler and will discuss what it takes to grow in containers. This is a perfect topic for those of us who live in densely populated areas with just a patio to grow on.  From buckets to toilets to feed troughs to kettle grills to cowboy boots to baby shoes - anything with holes for drainage can work for planting. Edibles, succulents, fruit trees, anything grows in containers.  You’ll learn about container projects like Salsa Pots and Bruschetta Pots as well as any other fill-in-the-blank food-themed container garden that suits your fancy! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome. I am Katrina Kirkabee and I'm here with Tina Spindler, and we are part of the UCC Master Gardeners of Orange County. We are the co-host this week of In the Garden with Master Gardeners. Welcome, Tina. Hi, Katrina. I understand we have a great project to talk about this week.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yeah, we're going to talk about several projects, and they all have to do with planting things in containers.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Planting in containers? What do you mean by planting in containers?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Well, pots are containers. Those are probably the things people are most familiar with. But we're going to talk about some pretty crazy containers so that we can broaden everyone's creativity and give them some fun ideas of things to do in the garden, particularly if they don't really have a garden.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Ah, so if we had some limited space that we could plant in containers and have a garden, even if though we have maybe an apartment or a condo or a house with not as much of a yard.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Or even a dorm room, you know. If any if we have any students listening to the show today, we are going to give you some ideas for having plants as part of your life, whether they're decorative or edible, whether you have any ground soil to plant in, or whether you have a balcony or a patio or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Why guess about if you just have about had about any amount of space, you could find a container to be your garden.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yes, absolutely. So first let's talk about, you know, why do you want to plant in containers? Well, we've pretty much alluded to that. For those folks who don't have a yard or some actual in-ground soil to plant in, containers are their only options. But there's other reasons. I mean, I have a yard, but I also plant in containers for a variety of reasons, and I think it's a great way, if you haven't ever gardened before, to start gardening in containers. And the reason is that containers are a manageable size, right? You don't have to look out at this big old space and try and figure out what you're going to do with it. You've got just this one, if you start small, one container, and you can focus on that, and you only have one small thing that you have to take care of.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Okay, tell us more, Tina. Well, let's talk about what you can use as a container, and here's where we can kind of get creative. You can use anything that'll hold soil as long as it has a hole in the bottom to let water drain out. And you can think of a myriad of things that could be used as containers, the most common of which, of course, are pots, right? I'm sure you have pots at home, right, Katrina? I have pots at home. So what what kind of pots do you have at home?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Oh, I have everything from little itty bitty pots to oh I've I'd say 30 gallons or so pots, and then I plant different things in and stick them around the yard and or on my deck where I on my deck where I can't have my garden is down below. So I have something growing on the deck at all times.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

So what are your containers made out of? What kind of material?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Oh, well, you could really go in a lot of different places there. I go everything from the st you know, the brown stucco material to the um to the decorative pots, to an old 1950s watering can with a hole in the bottom of it, to, you know, stuff that I find at thrift stores, um, other people's the other what other people don't want, it could be a pot.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Absolutely. And and so here's I'll give you some of the favorite ones I've seen as I've been out and about. So my husband and I went uh camping up the coast uh last year and stopped at a campground, and right in front of the check-in office was an old bathtub. Oh, I love it. Yeah, and and they had painted what was really cute is they had painted the bathtub red and black, and then they had filled it with a variety of red flowers. And so it was actually one of the most artistic looking containers I had ever seen because they had matched the color of the flowers to the color that they had planted this container. Oh, how fun. It was really fun. Um, so that that's just you know, visualize too bad it's radio, right? Because we have to visualize all these things in our imagination because I we can't show pictures, but you know, just visualize that. I mean, at first you think, oh, a bathtub, and of course, this was an old-fashioned bathtub, you know, the cloth foot kind of bathtub, which is just cute as it is. As it is, right. But then they painted it black and red, and it just was gorgeous once they planted these red flowers in there because it coordinated and had this very artistic, funky kind of appearance.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

So part of what today's show is about is getting out of our norm of what we're thinking about planting in the ground or our norm of planting in a little six-inch pot.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yeah, we're gonna talk about being creative, but we're also gonna talk about the practicalities because we do want whatever we plant to grow in these containers, and so we'll talk about both sides of it. Um, so let's to continue to stimulate kind of our creative thinking. I'll throw out a few more kind of fun containers that I've seen. And remember, again, they just need to have holes. So, of course, the bathtub, which had a drain hole, was perfect, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Would somebody drill the hole in that? Drilled a bunch of holes in the bottom of it, and it was a beautiful, beautiful, it had flowers and it looked like wildflowers just growing, and it looked like it just belonged there, and the it was gorgeous.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah, and and I've I've seen um a kettle barbecue, like a Weber kettle barbecue, an old one. Um and if you remember, those things have the little holes in the bottom so that you can adjust the airflow for for the charcoal. Oh perfect drainage. Perfect drainage, and it's it's nice and wide and holds a lot of soil, and so that makes a fabulous container.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

I had one of the master gardeners give me a pair of shoes. Old little child's shoes with little succulents in them. Starling. Just the cutest little thing. Just the cutest, it's small, adorable, and it's still outside my front door. I also have outside my front door, I got a couple a pair of boots, old cowboy boots, because I live in an equestrian area. Uh-huh. And it was part I don't ride horses, but I have I live in an equestrian area, and I got these two boots, and they're outside my front door, and I put succulents in them. Oh, how cute. And you know, they they're tall, some fall over, and they're easy to take care of, and I just every so often just go water them, and it's the easiest thing, and I get so many compliments on them.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Yeah, it's it's amazing. Again, as I said, you can use anything that will hold uh soil. And so they can be, you know, small and tiny, like the the little baby shoes that you had, or they can be giant like the bathtub I was mentioning, and hold a ton of soil, or the wagon, the cart that you were mentioning. Uh, anything that you can put soil into that has drainage holes can be a container. I've even seen a toilet, an old toilet. Someone filled that with soil. The bathroom sink, any of those, you know, you take them outside. Obviously, it was outside, it was not inside. Um, but this, you know, toilet was sitting in somebody's garden and it just made you laugh as you walked through the garden to see that toilet sitting there filled with soil and plants growing out of it.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Oh, how hysterical. And we could also do things that are much smaller if we have smaller areas.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yes, absolutely. You you can make the containers fit your environment. In fact, I've seen pieces of clay pipe that are only six inches in diameter, but you can cut them to any size. And so I saw in a garden that someone had cut those to different heights, but because they were only six inches in diameter, they didn't take up a lot of space. And so they had, you know, one that was two feet high, one that was eighteen inches high, one that was only a foot high. And by arranging those, they had this really beautiful, artistic, interesting, eye-catching arrangement, and it didn't take up much space at all.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

You know, here's one that's not quite a container, but I have a wall. And in my this wall I have, it's it's bricks and it's um it's a retaining wall kind of area, and I stuck plants, um succulents, into this wall. And it's just it doesn't take it it wasn't part of my yard, I just made it part of the yard. Very clever. And it just hangs down and it droops down and it's really, really pretty, and it's like my little tiny little containers for each one of those.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yeah, and I've seen people do something I think quite similar with, you know, the concrete blocks. You know how a concrete block has the uh two openings in it where they typically put the rebar up so that it holds the block in place. Well, I've also seen people use those as planters, and they they actually, you know, plant um, I I actually saw it set up as a vegetable garden where they just have kind of rows of these things, and they filled each of those holes with soil, and they had like a lettuce plant or a strawberry plant in each one of those holes. So they had this little edible garden that they were just using with cast off uh cinder block. I I've seen coconut shells.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

There you go. Coconut shells have been, you know, just top part of the coconut and put a little plant in there, put a little stand. Yeah. And it's a cute little decoration. But don't forget to drill a hole in the bottom. A hole is drilled in the bottom, you take it to the sink, drain it, and then you put it on your table in a little stand. Yeah. It's a cute little thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

So let's talk now about um, now that we've got hopefully everybody a little creative and stimulated and thinking about what they have uh in their in their yards or they can find at a thrift store and and use as a container. Let's talk a little bit about the practicalities of planting things in containers. Uh you mentioned that in your little tiny baby shoes you had succulents planted. And succulents are great to plant in almost any size container because they don't need much water. And if you have a little tiny container and you put a succulent in it, it's gonna be fine because it doesn't matter that when you water it, it's only gonna hold water for a little while because the succulents don't need that much water. But in general, if you're growing something other than succulents, bigger is better because most plants, especially if we're gonna start talking about edibles growing in containers, are going to need to have a consistent source of moisture. And if you have tiny pots, they dry out so fast.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

You can leave in the morning and they're dry when you get home.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yes. And I love seeing those s really cute little herb kits, you know, with the pots that are only two or three inches wide and and three inches deep. And I think, oh my goodness, that parsley or basil or whatever it is that you're gonna put in that pot is not gonna be happy for very long unless you're watering it morning, noon, and night. Yeah. And if you're watering it morning, noon, or night, you're washing all the nutrients out. So even if you water it sufficiently, unless you are fertilizing it every time you water, you're gonna have some issues. So just in general, wouldn't you agree vigor is better? Yes. Yeah. And so for let's talk about edibles, because that's I think one of our favorite things to grow in pots. If you're gonna spend the time tending to something, you might want to eat something out of it. Sounds good to me. Yeah. Now, do you grow any edibles in pots?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Not really.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Because you have some great beds in your garden.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

And then you plant in the ground, and I'm not as con I don't have to be as concerned about watering as much.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Right, right. So one thing that we use, and actually my personal favorite thing to grow edibles in are wine barrels. I love wine barrels. Wine barrels, half wine barrels or half whiskey barrels. They're they're relatively cheap. Uh for the size of the container, because you know they're, gosh, what are they? About two and a half feet in diameter. They're good size. And so they hold a lot of stuff. And I've actually uh consulted and created for for some neighbors wine barrel edible gardens in their backyards. And with say six wine barrels, you can grow enough food to keep your family in things like lettuce and tomatoes and peppers. It really is a pretty substantial vegetable garden if you have, say, a collection of six wine barrels. At the gray park at the Farm and Food Lab, we have actually citrus trees, orange trees that we're growing in wine barrels. They are big enough that you can plant fruit trees in wine barrels. I love it. I love it. Have a fruit tree. Yeah, so even if you are, you know, in a condo or an apartment and you only have a patio or a balcony, you could have a lemon tree on your balcony or on your patio.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Do you know my stepdaughter grew up thinking a house wasn't a house unless you had a lemon tree?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Oh, I agree. I think personally in California it should be a law that every house has a lemon tree, right? And if you don't have much room and you're young and you're moving out, you could have a wine barrel on your deck with a lemon tree in it. Absolutely, and it's they're they're relatively easy to grow. Um, and of course, our climate is perfect for citrus, so it's a great fruit tree to try. But you don't have to limit yourself to citrus. You can grow peaches, you know, nectarines, apricots, plums, uh, virtually any fruit tree that you can find a dwarf variety. So you don't want to try to plant a full-size tree in a wine barrel. You don't want a 20-foot tree in a wine barrel. Because it just won't be happy, right? It's gonna outgrow that and it's not gonna be getting enough nutrients or water to support itself. But if you can find a tree that has a dwarf variety, then it will be fine in a wine barrel. Now, one thing you do need to remember, just in general, for all containers, is that you have to regularly water and feed them. Since they're not in the ground, they can't go looking for food with their roots, right? They're stuck. They're stuck right where you put them.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

And you also have to be concerned about if they get enough sun if you're going to be planting a fruit tree. Absolutely. So education is very important too.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

For any edible, you you need sun, as you know. So if you have a patio that has sun, fabulous. You can grow edibles in containers all day long. If, however, your patio happens to be on the shady side of your house, probably not going to be able to grow edibles. You'll have to stick to shady flower, flowering or shrub type plants. And I'm sure we're going to be talking about that in the next few minutes. Yeah, we will. But I'd like to continue talking about edibles for a little while longer because I want to share some of the other types of containers that we're using, because I think that it's just nice to have a lot of these different choices. So, in addition to wine barrels, we also use galvanized tubs. So if you go to the hardware store, and particularly if you go, if you live or can travel to a place where there are horses in the vicinity, you can find feed stores that will sell the feed troughs, which are these, you know, big galvanized tubs. And if you drill a couple holes in the bottom of those, I actually saw a school garden that was in San Francisco. So of course, on a hill, you know, no grass, no flower beds, you know, it's it's in the heart of the city. And no room. And what were they doing for these kids, lucky little kids? They had outside each classroom one of these galvanized feed troughs that are about four feet long and about probably 16 inches wide, filled with soil, and each classroom painted the outside of the feed trough with pictures and you know, Mrs. Gallagher's fourth grade, and and they were growing edibles in there. They had their garden. They had their garden. And so these urban kids had an opportunity because of these containers to experience growing food. And kind of gives me chills when I think about it. But it it's just that's the great thing about containers. No matter what kind of environment you live in, you can experience, you know, the benefits of being close to nature and and growing things yourself. What other kind of containers? Well, we we also have some Eagle Scouts who were sweet enough to want to build some things for us. And so they created a couple of pretty fun containers, one of which is uh kind of my favorite. It's it's a bench, but one end of the bench is a planter. So we can plant uh a tree or some other kind of you know edible crop if we want at one end of this bench, which I think is just great because you can sit on the bench and then you can lean over and you know pick a strawberry or or something. So I thought that was a really clever idea. Again, say you have an apartment or a patio, condo, or something, and space is a premium, and you might want to have a seating area, you can combine a planter with a bench and have uh the best of both worlds.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Wonderful. And you also have your planter as a decoration in your seating area.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Yeah, absolutely. So planters can be made out of, you know, the containers can be wooden planters. That we had a couple of master gardeners who are great uh woodworkers and they put together some wooden planters. Uh and then, of course, we also have just some clay pots, like you do. And then the other thing that I think is really fun, especially for families who have children, are bucket gardens. Have you ever seen bucket gardens? Yes, tell us about bucket garden. I think it's great. I I did a little video on bucket gardens. It was so fun. So, bucket gardens are you get a bucket, of course, and it can be a really inexpensive, you know, Home Depot, nasty old orange bucket, right? And you drill holes in the bottom of it and you fill it with potting soil, and then you can plant in that bucket. And what's cool about it is you, especially if you're working with kids, you give them indelible markers or paints and you let them personalize these buckets with their name, you know. Oh, I love it. Tim, you know, put Tim on it, and then Tim draws a picture of a strawberry or an apple or whatever his favorite vegetable is. And so then what's cool about it is these buckets have handles, and although they might be a little heavy for a child to tote, you know, very far with an adult's help, you know, that the child can move the bucket wherever they want, and it's kid size, and it's small enough to be watered with a watering can. They can take ownership.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

They absolutely and their vegetables in their bucket. Yeah. And they're growing it. Absolutely. Oh, and it's decorated so it makes them like part of everything.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And the fun thing too with with the bucket gardens for kids is I like to do two bucket gardens for each kid. And the reason is is I like to do one where you start with transplants so that they immediately have a garden, right? Either strawberries or lettuce or something that you know you can eat pretty quickly. And then I like to do a second one with some kind of seed so that they learn where it comes from. Learn where it comes from and and they learn about that process. So how fun.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yeah. You know, for all the parents out there, what a great thing to do with a day off or holiday from school and an education thing for their children.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Yeah, it's it's a great project and real real simple to do. And then I actually know a person who gardens on a rooftop in Brooklyn, New York, of all places, and she uses just gosh, I don't know how many of those Home Depot buckets, but she she grows virtually her whole garden in those Home Depot buckets. So she she uses those and drills holes in the bottom. And so when it's time to plant tomatoes, she puts one tomato in each, you know, Home Depot bucket. And so if she plants tomato She's got ten buckets. I love it. Exactly. She'll put, you know, three or four lettuce plants or kale plants in a bucket, and uh it's inexpensive, it's portable. When she harvests, you know, a bucket, she only has to replant one bucket. It's not like she has to, you know, replant an entire yard. So um so the bucket gardening thing can be a really fun way of container gardening.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Sounds wonderful. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about how to keep your plants happy and healthy when you plant in containers. And one of the best ways to do that is to always start with fresh potting soil. And the reason that you you want to do that is that disease and insects can you know enter the soil while a growing season is passing. And then when you pull out, you know, the plants that are finished and you want to plant new plants later, it can be that soil can be, you know, somewhat contaminated with some fungal spores or perhaps some overwintering insects, eggs of insects, or maybe even soil-borne diseases. So the best thing to do is to throw all of that soil out or you know, dump it into a planter area and use it as mulch and start with a new fresh batch of soil. Now, sometimes when you have a lot of containers or very large containers, it's it's too expensive to do that. So in that case, I try to remove at least the top third or half of the soil so that hopefully any fungal spores or insects are mostly maybe on more of the surface of the soil, and by removing that you hopefully have gotten away, gotten rid of the majority of any contaminants.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Now, is this more of an issue? Contaminants more of an issue in containers than it is with planting in the ground itself.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

It is, and and the reason is that it's a very confined area. In your garden, you know, you have lots of space, um, the irrigation is, you know, washing things away. But when you have this container, it's kind of its own little mini environment. And so if a disease organism gets in that environment because you're watering it regularly and keeping it really moist, it's kind of like a petri dish. You know, it it can perhaps proliferate um in that environment perhaps more vigorously than it would in an open garden environment.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah. So so anyway, so that's the first step is you want to use fresh potting soil. And also if your container was used to grow something the previous year, or perhaps it was the Weber Kettle Barbecue, uh, you want to make sure that you scrub your containers before you plant in them to make sure that there's no, you know, contaminants in that container. So I usually just hose it out with a hose, you know, on the strong jet of water. And then what I do is I fill a spray bottle with um ten parts water and one part bleach, and then I just spray the the inside of that of the container and just let it kind of sit for a little while, you know, let the bleach kill anything that's in there, and then you can rinse it out one more time with the hose before you plant. Then you're gonna fill it with the container with soil, and if you have, you know how some pots have pretty big holes, you know, the hole might be like an inch wide and you end up having some of your soil fall out. Well, I found an easy way to prevent that from happening is to get a coffee filter and just lay the coffee filter on top of the hole. Really? Yeah, before I put the soil in, and that way it doesn't fall out. But of course the coffee filter drains, right? Right. So you're not inhibiting the drainage at all by putting the coffee filter down. You're just keeping the soil from And that'll last probably the life of that season of that vegetable. It doesn't last forever, but it it'll last, you know, until it's time to replant and change out the soil, usually. So that's that's a little hint. Um, another thing I know some other master gardeners do is they'll save uh, you know how you get a window screen that gets kind of wrecked and you have to replace it? They'll save the old window screens and just cut squares of that or circles of that out and lay that on top of the hole. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

I never think to do that.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Yes. So there's you know several little tricks to keep the soil from from coming out. And then, of course, once you have it filled with soil, you're gonna want to add fertilizer before you put your plants in. And for pots, you have you really have to read the label of the fertilizer because when we're out in the garden, right, we have a lot more space. If we you know sprinkle a little too much fertilizer, it's getting mixed in into a big volume of soil, so the odds of us over-fertilizing and burning our plants are less when we're doing it in the garden. But when you're in a confined area like a pot, you do want to read those directions and see how much it says. And usually it'll say, you know, a tablespoon for a 13-inch pot or something like that. So you do want to be sure that you use the right amount of fertilizer. But anyway, to get back to our containers and finish talking about the planting process, we've filled it with clean soil, we've added our fertilizer according to the package direction, and then the last thing that we have to do is to go ahead and put our plants in. And just like you would be planting in the ground, you want to take that plant out of its container, tickle its roots. We like to loosen the roots a little bit before we put them in the ground or in a container, and then put them in that container, usually with the top of the root ball being at the same height as the soil level. Then just firm it down gently and water it in well. And then, as far as caring for it, you do have to realize that containers, as I mentioned earlier, are completely dependent on you because they can't go out and look for nutrients in water because they're stuck inside that container. So you do have to water containers regularly and also fertilize or feed them regularly because as you water and that water comes out the hole in the bottom, it also washes nutrients out the bottom of the hole. So, do when you plant in containers, try to get yourself on a schedule of monthly feeding your plants.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Great idea. Great idea.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

And then washing them more closely as far as watered needs.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Right, because they do dry out, especially if we have Santa Ana winds or something like that. You may have to water your container in those kind of conditions, perhaps even twice a day if it's a smaller container and if it's a larger container less often. And then, of course, in the winter, when it's raining, you know, you may only need to water, you know, once a week. Um, you just have to use your finger and feel the moisture in that soil and determine whether you need to water it.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yeah, speaking of San Anna wins, I know my smaller containers, uh my house gets whipped. And if I know the San Ana winds are coming, I just bring some of the smaller ones in the house.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Because it it just it's so hard on the plants.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Yeah, it really is. They get dried out so quickly. Well, for our second part of the show, I thought maybe I'd talk about some specific container projects that people can do. We've talked about some general ideas, fruit trees in wine barrels or other large pots, planting vegetables in wine barrels, uh using buckets as containers. But I have a couple uh that I think are pretty fun projects, and and some of them are pretty attractive. So I thought maybe we'd talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

I'd love to hear it, Tina. You always have the best ideas.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

So, one of my favorite projects to do, and you've probably seen me do this one at um some garden talks, is I love to have an herb garden in a single pot. Yes. I think you've seen me do that many times. And it's super easy and really fun, and it does require a a little bit of an investment at the front end, but not horrible. Uh, but you need to buy a special kind of pot called a strawberry pot. And it is a pot that is kind of taller than it is wide, and I'm doing this with my hands. It's too bad our audience can't see my hands. But anyway, it's about uh the size that I like, it's probably about 20 inches tall. And then around the outside of the pot are openings. And the reason it's called a strawberry pot is it was designed so that you could have a lot of strawberry plants in a single pot.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

How wonderful!

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Yeah, so you can use this pot to grow strawberries, it's awesome for that purpose, and what you do is you put one strawberry plant in each of those openings around the side, plus a couple of them on the big opening on the top. But what I like to do with this strawberry pot is plant an herb garden. All of us use herbs when, or I hope all of us use herbs when we're cooking. If we don't, we should, because using fresh herbs when you're cooking is a super easy way to get great flavor.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

What what herbs do you like to use, Katrina? Oh my gosh, everything. I just I just bring them all home and I love to cook, so it just I have herbs planted everywhere throughout my garden. Yeah. But the the strawberry pot is beautiful because it has it looks aesthetically pretty, and then you have all your herbs in one location.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

That's why I love it. I I actually give it often for either housewarming gifts or hostess gifts. If I'm really like the hostess, I'll I'll make her I'll make her an herb pot. And uh so what you do is you you buy the herbs that you like to cook with. So for me, I would buy a couple of parsley plants, some chives, a couple of different kinds of thyme. Um, if it was summer, I would buy basil, uh rosemary. So basically you choose those plants that that cilantro, if it's if it's the cool season. Italian parsley. Italian parsley, oh yeah. So sage, you know, love sage. So anyway, you buy, you look at your pot that you've bought, odds are it'll probably have about a dozen holes in it, plus the big hole on the top. And um, or maybe I guess it's about nine, it's about nine holes, plus you can put three herbs on the pot, because I usually buy a dozen herb plants for this project. And you fill the pot with soil, but only up to where the first level of holes are, and then you take the herb plant that you're gonna plant and you put it down through the center of the pot, through the big hole, and then you take uh the leaves and kind of tease them out through one of those openings, and then you let the root ball dangle on top of that base of soil. And I know it's a little hard to visualize on the radio.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

You know, and if you have a hard time visualizing it, you can also Google Strawberry Pot. There you go. You Google Strawberry Pot, it shows a picture of it, and you'll go, oh, that's what she's talking about. I've seen those because everybody has seen them.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Yeah. Well, and I actually um there is a video on it. If if you go to YouTube and Google my name, um you'll see a video that that I was involved in to build one of these. So you can always do that too. Go to YouTube, Google Tina Spindler, and uh look for herb pot and and you can see a video on this. But Tina, how do you spell your last name? S-P-I-N-D-L-E-R. But the trickier part is my first name because my parents were creative, and so Tina is spelled T-E-E-N-A. So if you Google Tina Spindler, you'll see this herb pot video on YouTube. Anyway, um you keep planting those herbs one at a time through each of those openings, filling it with soil till you get to the next set of openings, and then at the very top of the plant, there's room for about three different herbs. And I usually put the the vertical growing herbs on the top, like you know, the the basil or or the ones that are gonna grow more more tall. And then you put this pot, you know, right next to your kitchen door, and every time you're cooking and you need a couple sprigs of parsley or a few sage leaves or whatever, you just you know open the door and it's right there. So even in the winter, you know, when you're cooking and it's dark outside and you don't want to run out to the garden, um, all you have to do is open your door and it's right there. So even though I have a big garden, I have a silly herb pot because I just love having that convenience.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

It is convenient. Sometimes I'm in the dark with a flashlight.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Oh yeah. Yeah, and where I live, and so are the coyotes. So same here. Yeah. So anyway, so that's one of my favorite container projects is the herb garden in a pot.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

You know, it is so beautiful. I hope you guys Google it because it's beautiful what she does, and that it just comes out so lovely. And if you're if you're thinking about giving somebody a present, it is a really heartfelt present that you get. It's handmade and it just it gives and gives and gives for a very long period of time.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

It is, it's it's pretty fun. So so yeah, I encourage you to to give that little um container project a try. Another one that I like to do, and this this is a uh I call it a fruit salad pot, and this uh involves boysenberries, or not boysenberries, excuse me, blueberries and strawberries. And what you need here is a pretty good size pot. So the pot that I use for this project is usually probably about 20 inches in diameter, 18 to 20 inches in diameter, and I get, yeah, probably 20 now that I'm kind of measuring it out. Yeah, 20 to 24 actually, diameter pot. And what you will do is you'll buy a blueberry shrub and you'll buy a six-pack of strawberry plants. And I'm sold. I had the visual, that was incredible. And then, and actually it's kind of fun if you do several of them. You know, if you if you planted four of them and maybe you know had them line a walkway or something, uh, it would be so fun and you would actually get a fair amount of fruit. Because one blueberry bush is not enough. You'll you need more to get to get a good number of blueberries.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

And we like planting blueberries in containers anyways.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

We do. You have to plant them in containers. Why, Katrina? Oh, Tina, tell us all about it. You're the one that taught me. Oh, we we want to put them in containers because blueberries like acidic soil. Guess what we do not have here in California? We do not have acidic soil. Yes, not in not in our part of California anyway. Yes, Katrina and I are keeping the blueberry growers in business personally because we keep trying to plant blueberries in the ground and killing them. So I think we've both finally learned to stop doing that because at $30 a plant, it gets to be an expensive lesson. Anyway, you want to plant them in a pot because then you can control the type of soil. You want to get bags of azalea camellia planting mix. That's an acidic planting mix because camellias and azaleas also like acidic soil. So I like to get the azalea-camellia planting mix, and then I mix that with a bag of you know regular potting soil, and I plant the blueberry in that. And then I take my little six-pack strawberries, I plant the blueberry shrub in the center of the pot, and around the edge, as an edging, I plant the little six strawberry plants. And so as it grows, you have blueberries on the shrub, and then your strawberry plants, which will grow and kind of hang over the edge and let their little strawberries, you know, hang over the edge. And if you have, you know, kids or grandkids, you can bet those little strawberries and blueberries won't last long because they're right at kid height. Oh, they won't last long with my husband either. That that too, that too. So um, so that's a fun container project to do.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Wonderful project.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

And actually, the shrubs are so pretty, I think. Don't you think the blueberry shrubs are pretty?

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Yeah, they're very pretty.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Uh I actually would put that at my front door as my you know, entryway. I mean, can't you see two of those, one on either side of your front door? That would be lovely.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

They'd be gorgeous. Yeah. So colors contrast against each other. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Really pretty. Um, again, though, you will need to feed these because they're in a pot, and uh so you'll want to feed the blueberry with uh an acidic plant food, and the strawberries will will be okay getting that plant food.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

And we can just go to the a nursery and say, I need plant food for for my blueberries.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Yes, absolutely. And they they should be able to tell you if you're at a big box retailer where they don't have staff who's who's very knowledgeable in that, just look for one that says plant food for acid-loving plants on the label, and that'll be the right one to get. So, yeah, so do we still have more time? Can we do more projects? Yeah, we sure do. We have about 15 minutes more. Okay, cool, cool. Okay, well, I think I will talk about some more edible ones because these are kind of fun. Another thing that's fun to do, especially with kids, or again to give as gifts, is to pick a theme for your container. And so I like to do salsa pots. I like salsa pots, I like to do bruchetta pots, I like to do um Greek salad pots, and it's just I'm gonna say tell us what you put in these pots. Yeah, it's just kind of a kick, you know, it just makes sure for me, it makes the the whole gardening experience. I mean, yes, could I plant a tomato in one pot and a pepper in another pot? Yes, you know, I could do that. But how much more fun is it to say, that's my salsa pot?

SPEAKER_01 41:15

That's my bruschetta pot.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

And you can make, you know, especially if you have kids, or even if you're a kid at heart, you know, you can make little signs that say bruchetta pot or you know, salsa pot. And then when you have visitors in your garden, they they get a chuckle and see how creative you are. And uh so anyway, for your salsa pot, you'll want, of course, to get a tomato, and that's the main thing that you're gonna put in your pot. So we need a little larger pot. You need a larger pot for all of these projects because we're putting not just a single plant in, we're making a little garden.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Now, when you say larger, what would be the minimum size of larger?

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Larger would be 20 to 24 inches, or a wine barrel would also be quite large and a quite good choice. Um, if you had a wine barrel, you could really do an awesome salsa garden or bruchetta garden. Yeah. So, anyway, in your large pot or wine barrel, um, you would want to, for your salsa garden, put in one tomato and a pepper of your choice. So if you like really hot salsa, you might want to put a jalapeno in. If you don't like super hot, then you know choose a pepper that has a more mild flavor. And then I also put in some onions, uh, just green onions, because in your pot to get the onions that are gonna bulb, form a bulb, uh would be you know a little difficult. And also uh in California we plant onions to bulb in the fall, and of course, if we're gonna grow tomatoes, this is gonna be a summertime pot, right? So instead I just get the green onions because green onions taste nice in salsa, also. So it's the tomato, the pepper, the green onions, and then a little cilantro, a couple of little cilantro plants. And so I put the tomato in the center, and then I put the you know other plants spaced out around it. You can never forget your ingredients. No, and so there you are. You've got your salse pot. I love it. Yeah, and then for the bruciato pot, it's a little bit similar, but you know, with an Italian twist. And so for that one, you won't need a tomato, and this time, of course, basil, and the onions again, and also you can plant garlic or garlic chives in there if you want to have a little of that garlic flavor in your bruschetta. Yep, so so that's a fun one, and then the Greek salad one. Uh funny how all of these different cuisines have tomatoes in common, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Let me ask you a question about tomatoes. Do we want to get a tomato that grows eight feet? Feet tall for this, or do we want to get a smaller type of tomato?

SPEAKER_00 44:04

Oh, I'm really glad you asked that because I was just so excited about my themes, I totally forgot to address that. But yeah, it would be better if you did not get a huge tomato plant, one that was going to grow really, really tall.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

And we could look on the label when we go to buy it and they'll say what kind of now also they have something called determinant and indeterminate tomatoes. Could you tell us a little bit about what that is and what do you recommend for our pot?

SPEAKER_00 44:31

Sure. So the determinant tomatoes are the ones that set their fruit kind of all at once. Um not literally on the same day while they all turn ripe, but that that plant grows to its mature size, it flowers, it sets its fruit, and then you can harvest it. And so that would harvest would occur over a relatively short period of time, a few weeks. An indeterminate plant keeps growing and growing and growing and growing, and it's setting fruit all the while that it's growing. And those are lovely tomatoes to have, but generally they get much, much taller and take up much more space. So if you're growing in a container, they're probably not you know the ideal choice. So but there are some indeterminate tomatoes that continue to grow that uh are a little bit more modest in size. So you just have to use your judgment. I have to say that the the tomatoes that I like to grow in containers are often the smaller tomatoes. So the the cherries, the little pear-shaped ones, they just to me seem to be a little more manageable in size. Uh I don't try to grow beefsteaks, you know, in the containers. I save those for my my raised bed garden. Um but yeah, it you know, it it on the other hand though, it it kind of doesn't matter. You know, you can make salsa out of a cherry tomato, you can make salsa out of an early girl tomato. So um, you know, just play around with it. In general, if you have a choice, I would I would get a tomato that stays a little bit shorter.

unknown 46:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

And it really is part of it's just having fun.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

It is, it is. And I've had tall tomatoes in in my containers, but what I've had to do is I've had to just get you know bigger and bigger steaks, or I end up tying them to a you know, uh, a neighboring plant or or the uh the post that holds up the patio cover, you know. It's just help me, help me. It's like, oh no, it's not stopping. So so um so yeah, just be creative and just enjoy it mostly. But um, but yeah, those are some some fun ideas to try and pick a pick a theme. Do we have a little bit of time to talk about um maybe some growing flowers and things in potatoes? Okay, about 10 minutes. Okay, cool. So let's talk about uh a philosophy of how to plant a container with color and interesting foliage so that you have a container that isn't just oh when I first started gardening, I I would plant, oh, pansies. Here are pansies. Look at my pot of pansies, you know, done. Um I was a math major, not not super creative, right? So orange pansies in one, yellow pansies in another, purple pansies in another. Not too creative. Yeah, but you did it. You did it. So anyway, since then I've learned a concept called thriller, filler, spiller, and I think I've mentioned this on another show that we've done. And it is just such a great guiding principle for doing decorative planting in containers. And the concept is that you want a thriller, and that is something that is either vertical growing or a very stunning plant, either through its foliage or its flowers. So that's your thriller. And then you want filler, which would be a mid-sized plant, often kind of bushy, and with a complementary color of either foliage or flowers. And then the last component is your spiller, and that's some kind of a plant that is going to grow up and over the edge and drape down. And the reason that that is such a pleasing combination is that you have multiple heights and usually multiple forms of plant. That's beautiful. And it just makes it more interesting for us.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

You know, Tina, you have that as you come into your house. And every time I stop and just look at that and going, oh my gosh, that is just so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

And and the the containers that Katrina's referring to as you come into my house, I last year switched to succulents because where I live gets pretty hot in the summertime, and we were traveling a lot, and I was just losing my containers all the time because no one was watering them enough. And so I switched to succulents, but you can still do the thriller, filler, spiller concept. And so I have a thriller, I have a purple, a dark purple aonium that gets tall and has that dark purple color, and then I have some other succulents that are mid-sized and green, so the the play of the dark purple against the green, the lighter green, is quite striking. And then for the spiller, I have one of those trailing succulents whose name I'm forgetting at the moment. Do you remember what that one's called? Oh, I don't. I don't either. But anyway, the the point is that whether you're using flowers or foliage or succulents, you can follow this thriller, filler, spiller concept when you're planting any container.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

This is so foolproof. When you do that, you you'd be like Tina and myself that don't have the creativity and had to learn a little bit of it, or you could have the creativity and you'll say, Oh, I know about that, because it really it stands out. And you don't know what it is about it, you just look at it and you go, Oh, wow. It's just interesting because you have their eyes to it. And it's intriguing to look at and it's beautiful, and they don't compete with each other. They can complement each other.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Right. And let's talk about that for just a minute, because that's something else I had to learn. Um, and that is using color and the color wheel. So we talked about thriller, filler, spiller, which uses different heights and different shapes of plants, but it also uses color. And one of the things that you can do is just draw up an image of a color wheel on the computer. You know, just Google color wheel and get one of the images to pop up. And you'll see on the color wheel that, you know, some of the colors are opposite one another on the color wheels, and some of them are grouped together on the color wheel. Well, you want to often use colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel because that gives you big contrast. But sometimes you want to use colors that are within the same range, so maybe pinks and purples shading to whites, because that can also be you know a really nice combination. Generally, when you're using colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel, that's dramatic. So if you like that dramatic look, then you can go with you know the colors that are opposite one another. If you're using the ones that are kind of adjacent to one another, like the pinks and the purples, then that's kind of a more soothing relaxing arrangement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

And the other one kind of jumps out at you and makes a statement.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

Right. But I'll tell you a technique that my artist sister does, and she taught me this. It's nice to have these resources, right? So when she goes to redo her pots, she takes the cart in the nursery or the home improvement center and she starts arranging the plants in the cart. And when she gets the color combination and the thriller-filler-spiller combination that she likes, then she knows she has her arrangement. She doesn't go in with any preconceived notion of I'm gonna get marigolds and petunias and bacopa and whatever. She goes in and she just picks up this one and this one and this one, one that's tall, one that's a filler, one that's a spiller, and she looks at it and says, hmm, not my favorite, puts all those back, you know, does another one or pulls one out, puts in a different one. Oh, that's great. Saves you money, saves you time and saves you. And it's so simple. And I thought, well, gee, that was easy. Why didn't I think of that? You know? But another good way to get your containers kind of free designed before you invest in the money and bring it up.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

It makes so much sense. Yeah. And so some of us don't have that. And even the person who does have the color in her head, she does it there. So for us who are not trained in it, what a way to save money and what a way to save time and energy and and to have a better final product.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

Yeah, absolutely. And it's fun, you know, it's a fun, fun thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Gotcha. Well, I think we're just about to the end of our show, Tina. I thank you so much. It's always wonderful uh hearing all your wonderful ideas and your thoughts and your pro processes of how to do things, and I thank you. Um this is Katrina and Tina, and we're Master Gardeners with the UCC Master Gardener Program in Orange County. Tina, again, thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and uh all the plant information that you've given us.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Well, thanks. Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.