Creating a container based water garden is a wonderful way to get your very own water garden started, without needing much space at all to do it in. It's also easy, quick, and fairly inexpensive to create as well.

Container water gardens can be made as small or large as you'd like them to be, but keep in mind that the larger your garden is, the more space you'll need for the water garden container to be placed. On the opposite end of the equation though, if you create your water garden too small, you won't have much room for some of the gorgeous water loving plants you'll start finding out about.

Many people create container water gardens in half barrel sized gardening containers, because these are readily available at most discount department stores. Often they come with a liner included too, which is something you'll need for creating your water garden. If the flower container you've chosen to use doesn't have a liner included though - and the container is also not waterproof - you'll need to buy a liner that will fit into that container you've chosen.

Now, water garden plants have their roots submerged below the surface of the water level even in a container garden, so they need special soil that works well in that wet environment. The plants you buy will often come in that soil already, but you'll usually need to buy some sort of pebbles or peat moss that will be placed on top of the soil before you submerge your plants. This material will help hold the soil in place instead of letting it float out into the main water area of your garden.

Once you've chosen a container and liner to create your new water garden in, place it where you'd like it to reside because it will be heavy once you've gotten the garden created. Put the liner into your container according to instructions, then fill it up with a water hose. Let that sit for at least twenty four hours or so, to be sure that there are no leaks. This sitting time also allows the chlorine to evaporate from the water too.

The next step is to create "shelves" on the bottom of your container. Stack pieces of bricks on top of each other, or turn an old plastic garden container upside down and put a brick on it to keep it from floating up to the top. The stacks of bricks and containers are what your new water loving plants will sit on to make sure they're at the growing height they need.

Some water loving plants will need to have their leaves only at the surface of the water, and the rest of the plant will be fully submerged. Other water garden plants however, need to have their soil base at the surface of the water instead, so you'll need to sit those plants onto some type of shelf or raised surface.

Your new water garden will also be much more interesting if the plants are not all the same height. When you choose plants for your garden for instance, try getting one which may grow two to three feet tall at maturity, and one that only grows a foot or so. Then get one which floats on the surface of the water, and another which will cascade over the side of your water garden container too. These varying heights and sizes will make the garden much more attractive and appealing.

Once you have your container and shelves ready, now you simply need to put a bit of pebbles or peat moss into the top of each plant container that you'll be putting into the garden, then submerge the container into the water and sit it on the shelf you created for it.

Once you have all your new plants in place, you now have a beautiful self contained water garden to enjoy to your heart's content!

Tags: Container Water Garden

Creating a container garden is a wonderful way to make use of spare patio, deck or balcony space. It's also an excellent way to have a beautiful garden even when you live in a home which has no outdoor yard or garden space too. Many people who live in an apartment in the city for instance, create container gardens on their balcony or patio area, and some even create them using window boxes which are attached to the outside of the building just under their windows.

Container gardens are fun to create for indoor areas too, using a wide variety of plants and flowers that will spruce up your home. In fact, almost any plant or flower can be grown in a container. Plants which grow quite large will need larger containers of course though, and if you start bushes, shrubs or trees in a container you'll eventually need to transplant them outside in the ground unless they are miniature varieties.

Some of the most popular types of container gardens include: Herb gardens in the kitchen or morning room; Annual or perennial gardens on the patio or inside the home; Vegetable gardens on the patio, balcony or deck; And even specialty gardens such as container salad gardens.

Most people have their first experience with container gardens when they buy a beautiful, lush arrangement of flowers or greenery at the store. These containers are usually filled to the brim with new flower blooms, or trailing vines that cascade over the side of the container.

Unfortunately a lot of people find themselves with dead plants just a few weeks after having bought the beautiful arrangement, and they're at a loss as to why the plants didn't live. The answer is simple though. When you buy a ready made container garden at the store which is packed full of blooms and greenery, the container is usually too full for the plants to have the room they need to grow, live, and thrive.

To keep container garden plants alive for long periods of time, you must make sure they have enough room for their roots. Some plants have much larger or longer root balls than others too, so those plants will require larger containers in order to continue growing successfully.

If you really like the way a ready made container garden looks, you can take steps to keep it alive and beautiful in your home. When you buy the garden, simply buy a new, larger container to transfer the garden to. When you get home, just remove the plants from their original container and place them into the new one with additional soil. You may have to separate the plants a bit if they're all tangled together, but generally you can keep the arrangement looking very similar to the way it was when you bought it.

The larger container will give the plants more room for their roots to spread and grow, so your new garden will continue looking lovely for a very long time. As the plants continue growing though of course, you may need to ocassionally transfer them to another, even larger pot. Alternatively you can separate out some of the plants into smaller containers, and you'll have multiple container gardens instead of just one.

Tags: Container Gardening

When you decide to try your hand at organic gardening, one of the most frustrating parts of the entire process is trying to control pests, disesases, and other miscellaneous problems that come up with any form of gardening. Thankfully though, there are natural techniques which can be used to solve many of these common gardening problems, and one of those techniques is known as companion planting.

Companion planting is the process of planting specific flowers, herbs, and vegetables together in a way that either enhances the taste of the vegetables, and/or serves to help naturally control common pest and bug related problems in the garden.

Companion planting is important and useful for natural garden pest control, but it's also very important in vegetable gardening too. When you decide to plant two or more vegetable plants close together in your garden, you could end up with either a very bad tasting vegetable, or an extremely good one. And how your vegetables taste is dependant upon which companion plants you chose to plant together.

If for instance, you plant basil close to your tomatoes, or put them together into the same container garden, you can enhance the flavor of the tomatoes - particularly when using them to make home made sauces such as spaghetti sauce.

Chives is another excellent companion plant for tomatoes as well as carrots. Not only will the flavor improve, the growth of these plants will too. Chives also helps to keep aphids away from tomatoes, and they're thought to help keep carrot rust flys away too.

Chives can even help prevent black spot on roses. They need to be planted near the roses for two or three years before they begin to help prevent this common disease though.

Planting cabbage with celery, dill, onions or potatoes will benefit all these plants, but trying to plant cabbage too close to tomatoes or strawberries may cause problems with both growth and production.

Marigolds, also known as Calendula, are a very common flower to use for repelling pests around your home and garden. These little flowers have been used for this very purpose for centuries. You can scatter them throughout your yard and garden to help repel a variety of common bugs and pests. You need to plant marigolds which have a scent though, or else they won't work to repel the bugs. Some people don't like the scent of marigold flowers either though, so if you've never smelled them yourself, you may want to before planting too many.

Tags: Marigolds, Organic Gardening, Companion Plants