Gardening in containers growing part of industry

Fill Priest -- yes, that's how he spells his first name -- wanted me to see a tomato the other day. He said it was the biggest he had ever seen.

I have to agree, it's at least up there with the largest -- and his is grown in a container.

Two, 3-gallon pots sandwich the sidewalk leading up to his apartment in Mocksville. The tomato plants were a gift from his nephew Matthew Priest, one a Brandywine, and the parent of the giant fruit. The other is called Giant Tree, which is well on its way to fulfilling its namesake.

They are both beautiful plants, deep green, lush and covered with fruits and flowers. The secret is a constant feeding of Miracle Gro fertilizer, a half-gallon each week and a gallon of water every day.

This helped to keep the plants, which were rapidly getting too big for their pots, healthy and happy.

Farming is in his blood

Priest, 51, grew up on a farm in East Bend where they grew tobacco, corn and vegetables. He learned his growing skills from his father, Clifford Priest.

After two heart attacks and 35 years in retail sales, including 15 in the produce section of Harris Teeter, he retired in 2005. Like many, he has found a way to grow a few vegetables in a limited space and keep an old passion alive.

Container vegetable gardening is an ever-expanding part of the industry, with seed companies offering a greater number of varieties suitable for pots every year.

The market for containers has also grown. One nice arrangement is the EarthBox, a system designed to fit conveniently on a porch, deck or patio. It provides everything you need to grow vegetables.

The EarthBox has a reservoir of water and is sealed at the top with a flexible plastic cover called a mulch cover. A tube feeds the reservoir. This reduces evaporation and keeps even moisture throughout the box.

A fertilizer band is placed across the top, either organic or chemical. By keeping the reservoir full and providing six to eight hours of sunlight a day, all kinds of vegetables can be grown. The system has an optional trellis arrangement and comes with casters to make it easy to move around. According to the instructions, you can grow eight lettuce plants, 16 corn seedlings, six hot-pepper seedlings or two tomatoes in one box.

Get a jump on the season

Allen Snow, a local landscaper and partner in the Potting Shed nursery in Pfafftown, has been using and selling the EarthBox for a couple of years.

"I grew peppers both in the garden and in the EarthBox last year. The plants in the Earthbox started producing two weeks earlier," he said. "I have never been able to grow eggplants very well in the garden, but they did great in the EarthBox. They usually get eaten up by bugs, and my eggplant seedlings were getting eaten until I planted them in the box and then it stopped. I have no clue why," Snow said.

Renee Shepherd is the owner of Renee's Garden Seeds, an Internet seed catalog in Felton, Calif. She has been in the seed-selling business for 29 years.

"There is a phenomenal new interest in growing vegetable plants," Shepherd said in a phone interview. "And with the limited space that so many gardeners have now, container gardening is a natural choice."

Shepherd said that she is testing a container-sized pumpkin in her trial gardens, and they are introducing a container romaine lettuce called Sweetie Baby with compact, dense heads that are 6 to 8 inches tall and heat tolerant.

Being small is only the beginning of judging a plant's worthiness for container culture. "Container plants have to be held to high criteria," Shepherd said. "In order for a plant to be introduced into our container-garden offerings, it has to look good, taste good and have really superior garden performance."

Shepherd offers a vegetable-garden collection in her online seed catalog (www.reneesgarden.com) that includes Super Bush tomato, Garden Babies lettuce, Pot of Gold Chard, Bush Slicer cucumber and Pizza My Heart peppers. There are also container collections of flower and herb seeds. "I have an extensive trial garden to pick from, but I grow potted herbs right outside the door to save a trip when I'm cooking," Shepherd said.

Of course, you don't need an EarthBox to grow vegetables on the patio. You can use just about anything that holds soil and drains well.

There are a few rules for container gardening. Always use pots that can accommodate the mature size of the plant. Use a good-quality potting mix that drains well.

Pots dry out faster than garden soil. Locate the containers where watering is convenient and won't be forgotten. Vegetables need sun for six to eight hours a day. Fertilizing is more important with container plants. Many soil-less potting mixes have a starter fertilizer charge that will get the plants going for a few weeks. But then you must supplement with a liquid or slow-release pellet fertilizer.

Unfortunately, pests find potted plants, too. But containers have the advantage of making the pests more visible. Scout for pests on container plants the same as you would in the garden.

Shepherd warns that container gardeners should be cautious about overcrowding plants in pots, and Allen Snow says that the Earthbox needs strict attention when it comes to water. Some is needed every other day.

Meanwhile, Fill Priest will be slicing up his two-pound tomato and sharing it with the residents of the Mocksville Apartments. "The whole neighborhood is coming tonight for a tomato tasting," he said.

Question of the week

Dear David: I LOVE your column! It is my favorite part of the weekend paper.

At this point in the summer, I am always kicking myself because I didn't get to start seeds for all my favorite flowers. As you know, the home-improvement centers are always full of inexpensive seedlings in the early spring, but now the supplies dwindle. Are there any flowers we can plant now, especially from seed? I am getting ready to put in chrysanthemums, but I would love to see more color in the next month or so. -- Vicky Cook

Dear Vicky: Timing may be the critical issue in good gardening. To understand when a seed-raised flower will begin to perform you have to consider a number of factors. First, is "days to maturity." This is the time from when a seed is sown until it begins to flower. The average for a sunflower to reach maturity is 90 to 100 days. The first frost is about mid-October, so that gives you about 75 days to play with, probably not enough to mature a sunflower.

Zinnias, annual salvias, nasturtiums and the orange and red varieties of cosmos would work. Calendulas with bright orange disks of petals are cold tolerant. They mature within about 55 days. Of course, the first frost date is not carved in stone and it is often rewarding to gamble on a later frost. Also, consider the many perennials and biennials whose seeds can be planted now for bloom next year. This is the ideal time to get them established.

■ If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, N.C. 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening@wsjournal.com.