Planning your Container Crops

All gardeners who grow vegetables need to plan out what they're going to grow each season, and where they're going to grow it. To some extent, this is easier for container growers (at least until you've filled up all the available floor space), because you can always add another container or two. If you haven't grown vegetables and fruit in containers before, your plan needs to be a bit more comprehensive, because you have to decide not just what you're going to grow, but which containers to

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Best vegetable crops for containers

In general, the fastest growing vegetable crops are best for containers, avoiding those with very long roots. Both annual and perennial herbs also do well, in most cases, and you can also grow soft fruit if you choose the right size pot. Most people start out growing salads in containers. These are not very fussy (though some types of lettuce require a fair bit of water), and although some have a tap root, there are cut and come again varieties of most types which are harvested small,

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Apples really do keep the doctor at bay

As I've started to run out of truly useful herbs (there are plenty, I know, but some are so obscure you probably won't be growing them), I've decided to start a series of fruits that are useful medicinally. Today's fruit is the apple, Malus domestica (syn. M. malus, M. pumila, M. pumila domestica, M. sylvestris, M. sylvestris domestica, Pyrus malus), which is a cultivated hybrid. If you find a true apple growing wild, it's almost certainly an escape. There are many other Malus species,

Apple health benefits