5 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started A Container Garden | Garden Lessons Learned

After almost a decade of container gardening and professional horticultural qualification, I’m happy to share with you today some of the things I wish I knew sooner on my gardening journey. Had I known these things before I would probably avoid many mistakes and disapointments!
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hi everyone in today’s video I would like to share with you a couple of things I wish I knew before I started container gardening, if I knew all of this before I will probably avoid many mistakes and also a lot of disappointment as well, so these are just some of the things I can think of but it would be lovely if you could also share your own experience in the comment section what are some of the things you wish you knew earlier on your gardening journey perhaps someone who’s watching this video later can find all of these tips helpful. okay so I’m going to start by saying that when I started container gardening I already had some experience growing plants because I come from a gardening family but I quickly realized that growing plants directly in the ground and growing them in containers is way different and it’s not necessarily that one is more difficult than the other it’s just a different way of growing plants and for example when you grow plants in pots you may need to pay attention to completely different things or you may struggle with complet completely different issues than if you were to grow the same plants directly in the ground and you know vice versa, so I would say the first thing that I wish I knew before and the first thing that makes a difference between growing plants directly in the ground and in containers is that when we plant plants directly in the ground you know the soil isolates the plants roots it protects them from heat in summer and then it protects them from frost in winter and also when you plant plant directly in the ground it has all that space available to spread its roots in search for water and nutrients versus in containers your plants only have that small amount of soil or I should rather say substrate that the pot can hold, so first of all it’s going to dry out quicker so you will need to water your container grown plants more frequently and the more frequently you water the more the nutrients are being leeched out and washed out of the soil so you will need to fertilize your containerplants more frequently than you would your inground grown plants and then as I said garden soil isolates the plants roots and when you think about this when we grow plants in pots well technically speaking the rootball is sort of above the soil level in a way right and the only thing that protects the plants roots is the thin wall of your container so you may need to um provide additional protection especially during winter from frost to protect the roots of your plants to prevent them from freezing so all in all as I said it’s not necessarily more difficult to grow plants in pots or it’s not easier to grow plants in pots it’s definitely going to require more maintenance, it’s different but it’s going to require more maintenance when you grow plants in containers versus directly in the ground okay number two and number three are kind of connected with one another so first I wish I knew a little bit better how different plant groups work and um that’s something I spoke about in a recent video I went through all the plant groups what are the differences and especially what is the difference between for example annual plants and um frost tender perennials because there’s a whole lot of plants that people refer to as annuals where in fact they are perennials they just need some protection from frost so I wish I knew that better because I’m totally guilty of getting rid of perfectly healthy perennials at the end of the season just because I thought they were dead and they just simply went dormant so if that’s something you wish to learn a little bit more about I will leave you the link to that video in the description box and at the end of this video so that you can watch it later and another thing I speak about in that video are hardiness zones that’s also really important thing that I wish I understood a little bit earlier uh on my gardening journey because um before I would listen to advices given to me by more experienced gardeners and for example they would tell me oh you need to protect that plant from frost so I would go out on my balcony I would end up wrapping in horicultural fleece or bubble wrap every single plant that I had or they would tell me oh no don’t bother keeping that plant because it’s not going to survive winter or that plant is annual… and I’m not saying their advices were not good, not at all, these were some really awesome advices but these were advices that applied for their gardening zone for their hardiness Zone not necessarily for mine, because I for example garden in zone 8 so there’s no no point for me to protect plants that are for example hardy down to zone four, five, six, or even seven because I know that these plants can survive winter outside without any protection at all and the same goes for plants that are frost tender for example I learned that I can actually overwinter geraniums for example outside uh with a little bit of protection because geraniums can take light frost so if I protect them I can successfully over winter geraniums outside in my climate so if you know your Zone if you know the zone of your plants this kind of gives you exactly the information you need to know which plants you can leave outside without any protection which plants could benefit from some frost protection and then which plants are way too tender to be left outside in your climate and they need to be either brought indoors or treated as seasonal plants all right and number four is potting soil matters this is a really important aspect of container gardening the choice of your potting mix this is even more important than the plants you choose cuz poting mix or the substrate it’s literally the base of your garden that’s what’s going to anchor your plants in the pots that’s where your plants are going to draw water and nutrients from and that’s also where all of those beneficial soil microorganisms live, all of those beneficial bacteria beneficial fungi that protect your plants that live in symbiosis with your plants so the choice of potting mix is really important but obviously when you enter Garden Center and you see all of those different potting mixes, for roses, for geraniums, for hydrangeas, for herbs, for Mediterranean plants, for this or for that, you wonder do I really need a different potting mix for every different plant or is it just marketing…? and it is marketing to certain extent but it’s true that there are different potting mixes available and you’re not going to plant your seeds your trees and let’s say your blueberries all in the same potting soil cuz it may work for one of those plants but surely not going to work for the two others so in my container garden I keep it simple and there are three things that I use and I think that anyone no matter what plants you grow uh you could totally just base on these three uh types of potting mix so the first thing that I use is a multi-purpose potting mix with added perlite, this is the base of my garden, and I use Lightmix by Playgron this is something that I’ve been using for the past I don’t know how many years and and I have not found a better one so if you’re on the lookout for a good quality multi-purpose putting mix I would highly recommend Lightmix, and this is something that you can use uh for your seeds, you can start your seeds in multi-purpose putting mix, you can uh plant your annual flowers in it, you can plant your veggies in it, you can plant your herbs in it, uh perennial plants even shrubs even your house plants… so this is really the base and this is something that you’ll probably use uh most frequently and then second type of potting mix that I use is garden soil actually, so you can’t plant your plants in pure garden soil cuz this is going to compact too easily it’s going to be too heavy but adding a little bit of garden soil can be actually really uh beneficial cuz garden soil has incredible capacity of holding water and nutrients. most potting mixes contain different types of peat or uh coconut coir or coconut fiber and garden soil has completely different components let’s say so it’s better at holding water and nutrients it’s also heavier so it’s more suitable for those taller larger more mature plants like trees shrubs and climbers because it provides more stability and protects them from falling over in the wind so uh I usually mix multi-purpose poting mix with garden soil I just buy bagged garden soil there are already ready mixes available like for example John innes no 3 is a very popular um garden soil based substrate, but it’s not available where I live so I just buy bagged garden soil, mix it with multi-purpose poting mix and then the third thing that I use is ericaceous soil and this is a substrate that has low pH because many plants need acidic soil because certain minerals are only available at low soil pH so there’s a whole bunch of plants that need low pH like for example Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Camelias, blueberries and generally plants from the Ericaceae family they need low soil pH because if you plant them in a traditional mix after several months they are literally going to exhaust themselves they are going to be deprived of nutrients so at some point they are surely going to die so they need ericaceous soil but if you don’t have any plants from the ericaceae family or don’t have any acid loving plants then you can totally get away with just multi-purpose potting mix and garden soil okay and finally number five and and this is my favorite gardening quote "if something is not eating your plants your garden is not part of the ecosystem" so let’s normalize pests! pests are part of the food chain if we eliminate pests we eliminate many many beneficial insects and even some pollinators as well so don’t freak out when you see some Aphids on your plants and learn to also share your garden with all of those different creatures embrace biodiversity and heck even plant some stuff just for those "bad bugs" stuff like nasturtiums that can act as host plants that will keep pest away from your actual ornamental plants and you will see when you stop using pesticides and when you stop trying to kill every living thing in your garden you will see you will have a much more healthy garden so instead of using pesticides try to learn a little bit more about beneficial insects like lady birds, hoverflies or lacewings and what can you plant in your container garden to actually attract those insects to your garden and you will see those little creatures will protect your garden far better than any pesticides cuz pesticides are non-selective so they kill the pest but also beneficial creatures and who you think will come back first the pest or the beneficial creatures? well surely pests because for once they reproduce way faster and secondly they don’t care they will always come back they will always be after your plants, but the problem is the more you use pesticide the more those pests become resistant to that pesticide and the more you use pesticide the more beneficial creatures you kill so at the end you will have more and more pests so instead of using pesticide as I said try to learn a little bit more about beneficial insects and natural predators and how you can introduce them or how you can attract them to your garden so that they stay in your little container garden and protect your plants okay so here are five things that I wish I knew sooner but I’m happy to share them today with you and hopefully they will help you on your container gardening journey as I said would be lovely if you could also share some of your own ideas in the comment section thank you so much for watching and we’ll see each other in the next one