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Gardening doesn't have to be hard. As I grow into my 70's I found that I was trying to make my life simpler and easier to live without giving up a lot of things I like and gardening is one of them.
Last season I did real well with my patio pots and I intend to do more this season. The exception to that is the lovely cornflower. I intend to sow those seeds wherever there is a bare spot.
With that in mind I asked Carl to make me some raised garden containers and he did. They were waist high and about 2 ft. by 4 ft. each. He built 3 of them for me this year and I used them for planting veggies.
Here are some real easy growing flowers and vegetables.
Coneflower (Echinacea) makes a great companion flower for your veggies, attracting bees and butterflies while beautifying the garden. It is a perennial and very easy to grow, producing the very first year. They begin in midsummer and continue happily into fall, beckoning the butterflies and bees. And when the flowers finally pass, the cone dries out on the plant, making a feast for autumn songbirds!
If you've never grown America's native Purple Coneflower, you're in for a treat. It's one of the easiest sun-loving perennials in the world, with a full, bushy (yet compact) habit, strong stems to hold up those heavy cones and petals, and a re-blooming nature that keeps the flowers coming no matter how many you cut for indoor bouquets. It loves heat, doesn't mind humidity, and once established in your garden, will even thrive during drought (though best flowering occurs when the plant stays watered). Untroubled by most pests and diseases, it is a carefree addition to the sunny bed, border, or wildflower garden.
Lettuce is a cool-season crop, but with a little planning and the right varieties you can extend your harvest well into summer! For growing purposes, there are essentially two types of Lettuce: loose-leaf and head. The advantage of loose-leaf types is that you can pick the leaves individually, without having to wait for the whole plant to mature. (And these varieties are often cut-and-come-again, so when you pick early in the season, you just get more leaves later!) The advantage of head types is that they tend to be more heat-tolerant, so you can grow them later in the season -- and feed a crowd, of course!
No matter which type you choose, plant your Lettuce seeds in succession -- making a new planting every week or two, so that you always have new plants coming to maturity, instead of a gigantic harvest all at once!
I grow mine in patio pots as I can keep them watered, move them into the shade and out of the late, hot sun to keep the wilt down. Also, I can just pick what I need for each meal and it keeps on growing.
It's time to think about tomatoes and I was real pleased with my patio pots of tomatoes last year. Tomato is a warm-season crop, best begun indoors 5 to 6 weeks before the last scheduled frost for your area and transplanted when the spring soil is warm and nighttime temperatures remain above 55 degrees F. Mini types (cherry and grape) are terrific to pop into salads or eat straight from the vine.
There is a grape tomato called "Sugary" that is the new 2005 All-America Selection winner. This grape tomato is supposed to be the sweetest ever by a country mile! Even children who turn up their noses at other Tomatoes will find Sugary an irresistible treat. And this is a vigorously vining plant that delivers HUGE yields -- let it climb a 5 ft. tomato tower and just keep harvesting fresh clusters of yummy tomatoes all summer long! The ones I grew last year were great. I was able to yank up some grape and cherry tomatoes last year and put them in pots and take them into the greenhouse for tomatoes all fall until we got the first really big freeze. We do not have heat in the greenhouse and they were done in about early December. I am going to try the "Sugary" this season.
Peppers are real easy to grow and do very well in patio pots. I find I can control them more. We do not need a lot of food in our old age. The pots give us more than we need. Fresh veggies all summer into late fall. Plus we do not have to pay the extra premium price for any pepper that is not green!
Cucumbers are so easy to grow. Just put them anywhere and make sure they get lots of water. Pots work also with support towers or poles. One cannot beat fresh cucumbers because the delectable skin (that's where most of the vitamins are) is not coated with wax as most of them are in the super market.
I rule out anything that takes an effort in my old age. I never have any luck with carrots, so I don't plant them any more. We love French Breakfast radishes, so we put some of those in early. I plant a few seeds every day plus some onion sets, just to keep our hand in. We love fresh peas, but we they come and go so fast that most of the time for us it is an exercise in planting. Frozen ones will have to do us in our old age which at this writing is 73!
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 Resources: Excerpted from “Arlene’s Garden Series” by Arlene Wright-Correll
For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/ and click on Arlene’s Books you can download or buy my gardening & cook books. All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and we thank you for your attention to this site.
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