8 inch pots, a south facing window, what next?

[yonnielovesveggies]

Hi guys

I'm a total beginner and never successfully grown anything in my life.

Now I'm in China and I want to minimise the amount of food I consume from unknown sources.

I've got a bunch of 8 inch pots, a big south facing window, autumn coming up, I want to grow something in these pot indoors. But where to begin?

I've already got some basil and baby rocket started in little cells.. but I'd like to use these big pots too.

Any suggestions for what to do with them? Specifically, are there any seed combinations that I can just plant directly in such a big pot? Is it cheating to want to skip the planting in one inch cells - waiting for them to grow - moving them elsewhere - step?

Thanks so much!

Yonnie

[applestar]

Easy fast growing vegs include radish and turnips (small round kind not the big daikon types), mustard, leaf lettuce , etc. greens (if it's cool enough already).

8" might be big enough to grow one bush bean plant per pot. (Remember to fill the pot -- often people under fill containers and end up with soil mix that settle down, losing valuable root growing space in an already limited container.)

...or you can get some fresh mint and lemongrass and try rooting them.

[garudamon11]

Maybe you should grow things you consume the most

[yonnielovesveggies]

Applestar - thanks for the helpful advice!

How many lettuce seeds should I plant in an 8 inch pot? I've made the mistake of putting way way way too many seeds in my one inch cells and crowding everything out. These super basic instructions aren't generally on a packet - or maybe they are and I just can't read Chinese very well.

I've got some baby rocket that will need to be transported from my one inch cells to another container now. Can I put the rocket into an 8 inch pot? And if so, how many shoots should I put in it? ie, how much space should I be leaving between each little shoot?

There's still so much to learn!

Garudamon - thanks for your reply. I'll consume pretty much everything I grow. Problem is that not everything is suitable for planting in an 8 inch pot straight away. My question was to learn what IS suitable for planting in a big pot right away.

[rainbowgardener]

The other problem is that once they aren't baby seedlings any more, 8" pot is actually quite small. One basil plant, if it does well, is going to need more pot than that. The basil gets 3 feet tall and about that wide.

8" isn't a lot of pot even to grow things like lettuce and spinach in. It does work pretty well for a lot of the smaller herbs, mint, oregano, thyme, even dill and fennel. If you really want to grow veggies, you are probably going to need to invest in a couple of big containers (and of course the potting soil to fill them).

[Tilde]

What is rocket? I've never heard of it.

I have to agree on the pots for lettuce. I've done square foot gardening with lettuces and such and I needed a lot more soil space than I had.

However, if you are doing leaf lettuce and spinaches and kale and such, you could do something wider but flatter. I've been thinking about milk crates but I have some old shoe crates modeled after pop bottle crates (basically wide and flat) that I might use since lettuce doesn't need a super deep deep root system.

One method I've seen but not used yet was the garden table concept - take some wood and build a frame 4-6 inches deep, lined with something to hold the dirt in on the bottom (maybe hardware cloth lined with breathable weed cloth) ... of course that is an outdoor solution, for indoors you might just need indoor friendly shallow wide-area containers.

[yonnielovesveggies]

Thanks for the advice!

Just wondering how big is big enough for lettuce and rocket? Do you mean big as in deep? Or big as in wide? As a total beginner, the blindingly obvious is not at all obvious to me!

I don't mind investing in pots and soil - there are definitely less worthwhile things to spend money on!

Thanks again!

[applestar]

Living in China, your sources may be different, but this thread might be useful
http://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32338

...and you may have seen this thread already since TildeCCH bumped it
http://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22433

[Tilde]

Ah, such a philosophical question - can one really bump a stickied topic?

I do better with pictures. Here is what I envision in an 8" pot:

[img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41gjOQxXBOL._AA300_.jpg[/img]

You need something with more surface area for loose leaf salad plants, in my theoretical vision:



[img]http://upload.ecvv.com/upload/Product/201010/China_Bread_Trays_BT55481030201050611PM3.JPG[/img]

Here is a link to where I learned about salad tables (note they use growing medium rather than just straight dirt).

[url=http://growit.umd.edu/saladtablesandsaladboxes/index.cfm]UMD Salad Tables[/url] Like I said, I've not built them yet, but I've read through everything they've got an an offshoot (heh) of this using the frames only to hold 18 gallon totes built with a bit of a holding tank of water in the bottom similar to "earthtainers".

[yonnielovesveggies]

wow! Thanks for directing me to those links. They're super helpful! Now rolling up my sleeves to get thinning and planting!

So many kind souls on this forum. I'm so glad. Thankyou all so much for your very helpful contributions.

Yonnie