Patio gardening is so common in Austin that when I used to search nearby
back yards for my wandering cat, I found big back yards entirely filled with
plants in pots!

I once had a housemate who had an older book on patio gardening, but I have
no idea what the book was.

It is basically gardening in pots instead of soil. You need only make sure
your pots are big enough for your plants. You can arrange your pots in any
way that looks good.

I grow annuals, like marigolds, and those daisy family plants, in window
boxes. I have Mexican Heather in a window box, and a small pot. I have
small shrubs in larger pots, including a lantana bush, two esperanza bushes,
and a plumbago. These are common patio bushes in Austin. Esperanza is
particularly lovely and hard to kill. You have to keep picking off the
blossoms as soon as they fade, and you water large shrubs thoroughly when
the soil has dried out.

Water window boxes every day in hot weather - and with luck your flowers
will survive. In summer they tend to do best in partial shade.

You should prune patio bushes pretty far back annually, about this time of
year.

I have had varying luck with herbs; I have two thriving rosemary bushes that
are two years old; you water them the same as flowering shrubs. It loves
poor soil but does well in potting soil. I have one of each of two
different kinds. My housemate also has a rosemary bush in a pot. One of
mine has been flowering continuously since November. It will die if you
never water it.

I have a mint plant that is over a year old. It too will die if you never
water it; otherwise it is a pretty hardy plant.

I had a thyme plant doing well in one of my esperanza pots for over a year.
I think it overgrew itself, and I am not sure it is dead. Possibly it just
needs pruning, the way flowering bushes do.

Parsley once did well until hot weather and drought hit; it seems to be more
delicate than marigolds.

I tried sage; it lived, one died, the other thrived but got covered with
some kind of yicky growth.

I have gotten flowers from literally anywhere. Just look at them to be sure
they are healthy when you buy them. Marigolds that look literally half
eaten, for example, usually only continual disintegrating after you bring
them home and sometimes the disease spreads. Ditto for marigolds all of the
buds of which are hanging and dead.

Dora




"Steve Coyle" wrote in message
om...
I've been container growing at home for twenty years, mostly because
I've moved a lot and never wanted to leave plants for my landlord.
When I lived at married student housing down on Lake Austin Blvd. we
had this little four by six foot concrete patio that was just big
enough for a lawn chair and served for most folks in the apartment as
a "patio".
I nailed together 1 by six lumber, filled it with bulk potting soil
and had an instant patio garden. Most landloards I imagine would not
be too happy about that but I got away with it mostly because having
UT as a landlord they were perhaps not paying much attention.
I've got one hundred pots I use for my current garden, and have
tried just about everything I could at one time or another in pots. I
keep a limit of one hundred so I don't get carried away. I'm sure
there will be lots of lists with the obvious canidates, but some of
the more unusual ones I like in pots a
Beets ( I've got those right now, and pick leaves for our salad. )
Osaka Purple Mustard ( another oranmental and edible green I'm
harvesting )
Sedum Mexicana ( very tough sedum with little yellow flowers that
trail out of the pot )
Sambac Jasmine ( Very fragrant, right by the front door, this is the
first year I kept it out during the freeze and it still survived )
Bay Laurel tree ( I harvest the top so it never gets more than 18'")

Of the herbs, Rosemary is real finicky about well drained soil and not
overwatering, oregano grows like a weed, I have to replant thyme
constantly because my wife makes me grow it, but I've never had much
luck with it. As far as Basil goes I do it from seed because a bunch
of young plants crowded together do better for me than one of those
high dollar four inch pots.

Another good thing about container patio growing is that if your
getting old and decrepit like me you can hoist the pot up onto a table
to work and not have to spend so much time bending over.

take care, and by the way thanks for the folks who sent the tips on
deer resistant gardens, now I know why everyone's yard west of Mopac
looks the same.

Steve Coyle
www.austingardencenter.com

One more thing, the biggest pest that bothers apartment gardens are
the pernacious 'landlords', My dear old mom lived in the luxurious Rio
Hondo apartments in Hyde Park and for some reason the landlord had
this almost obsessive hatred of green growing things. She battled him
to a draw over her potted plants by being relentlessly stubborn about
putting them out, and she snuck around the complex planting seeds and
tree seedlings, a couple of which finally grew big enough for him to
give up trying to kill with round up.