Summer Project: The Mobile Garden

**DrNic** · 05-15-2011, 01:24 AM

Recently my wife and I have started looking for our first home and we're hoping to move sometime by the end of the summer. Since we hopefully aren't going to be at our apartment for the full season I was hesitant to put in a garden this year. Then it occurred to me, what about a mobile garden with everything in pots?

So this is my new summer project, the mobile garden. In total it will be smaller than normal but everything will be grown in pots such that if we do move before the end of the season we can just take it all with us.

At the moment we've got 8 window boxes out, 2 with various herbs, and 6 with 3 different types of beans. In the next week or so I'll put out my heirloom tomatoes (waiting for them to arrive in the mail) as well as a bunch of basil.

The pots on the edge are actually 2 maple saplings and 10-12 japanese maple saplings. The owner of the house has a fantastic japanese maple tree in the back yard and every year in the spring there are saplings all over the grass that eventually get mowed down when they mow the lawn. So this year I carefully pulled a bunch up. We'll see how they do. If they make it I'll probably use them as some kind of decor at the new place, and my wife loves it because they are the same age as my son.

I'll update this thread with more Mobile Garden pics as the season progresses.

**Rue** · 05-15-2011, 03:27 PM

Excellent!

I love the concept of container gardening. Our yard has the poorest soil...nothing thrives out here. After years of fighting with it, amending soil in some beds, etc., I'm starting to think containers more and more too.

I've started, but haven't found quite the right size and soil mix that works for here...

There are some really good book available on container gardening out there...if you want to know more about it as a gardening option vs. a temporary solution.

**DrNic** · 05-15-2011, 08:32 PM

Yeah I've done some container gardening in the past but this will be my first full out effort.

The soil in that plot started out great the first year we used it, but over teh winters turned into clay and is now really hard to grow things in. At the moment all the pots have fresh store bought garden soil which is making a huge difference already on the herbs. I'm hoping to see such results with the veggies as well.

**Taurus** · 05-16-2011, 04:51 PM

5 gallon plastic pails work great for tomato plants. Just make sure to drill holes in the bottom of the pails so they will drain.

**Rue** · 05-16-2011, 04:55 PM

You can actually plant tomatoes right into a bag of soil. I saw that done somewhere...but I'd have to look it up again.

**Taurus** · 05-16-2011, 05:14 PM

The pails allow for staking or caging...it's just my perferred method. I've been container gardening now for quit a numbers of years...it takes a bit more watering, but far less weeding or mulching. Best of all, like Nic said, it's mobile.

**Cyberra** · 05-17-2011, 01:45 AM

Sounds like a good idea... There's been so much spring/summer/fall rain here that my vegetable garden drowns and rots in the ground. Plus, my grandfather dumped a whole package of epsom salts into the garden a couple years ago (supposedly putting a LITTLE BIT in the holes before planting a tomato plant makes the tomatoes grow bigger and rounder) and nothing's grown right since. Every year we dig out and replace at least a foot of soil, hoping to get rid of the salt, but the rain brings it up from the deeper levels. And the plants do not grow well at all.