Total Newbie Gardening Questions!!

[chely7425]

So, I got brave this year and decided to try my hand at container gardening. We live on a military base so we can't plant anything in the ground, but produce was getting too expensive so I figure I would try the container thing! Right now I have 4 tomatoe plants and 1 pepper plant in pots on my back porch. They look like they are doing good, but what else can I plant? When can I plant things? I see people talking about spring/summer vs winter gardens? What is that about? And I have no idea what zone I am in... I live near Leesville, LA (west central Louisiana) if that helps at all...

[JamieCatheryn]

You're probably in zone 8 or 9. Your frost free season is mid March to mid November. I can't tell you much about container gardening, my beds are doing great but if it's in a pot I kill it. Summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant, beans, squash, and melons are usually planted in the spring whenever it warms up with no danger of frost left (melons and squash spread out and require creative solutions as container plants). With a long season like yours, you can keep planting heat loving things a while, look at a plant's "days to maturity" and see if that will arrive a good while before mid November, it's still ok to plant it if it's something you can harvest all at once, not meant to produce all summer long. Also if planting from seed you can look up it's ideal germination temperatures and stick a meat thermometer in your soil and see if it's within that.

Winter crops can be either cover crops to enrich your soil and keep it loosened up (more for beds than pots) or food crops that love cool/cold weather. Among those are mostly roots and greens, for example carrots and cabbage. You have a very long growing season there and it will barely dip below freezing at all. When the heat is over you can grow peas and lettuce as long as it doesn't frost over, early spring/late fall type of things that love cool but not freezing.

So, ideas for planting around late October: Lettuce, Peas, Radish, Carrot, Celeriac, Rutabaga, Turnip, Parsnip, Spinach, Kale, Cabbage. I guess you'll need very large/deep pots if you do roots.

[chely7425]

Thanks for the advice!! I would love to do peas and lettuce... probably not root veggies though because the seems like a big investment in containers!! We are hoping to buy a house with some land (at least an acre, hopefully 2-3) in 4-6 years so I am trying to just do things that are pretty simple, but yummy!!

[taramoon13]

herbs are a great thing to grow in containers!