Container Gardening

The house has a small, rectangular, enclosed patio that receives some morning sun and some shady afternoon sun. The idea is to grow some plants in pots, some plants in the area I can excavate around the cement pad and, most ambitiously, in some sort of suspended containers from the sides of the patio walls.

So far I have a calla lily in a pot, some mint in the ground, and some kale starts. I’m waiting on the rosemary, oregano, rhubarb, collards, cilantro, basil and lupine seeds to sprout and distinguish themselves from the weeds. I think the weeds are ahead right now.

I also have some crappy dirt I bought from a greenhouse (it has branches! and beans!) along with some very cool pumice dirt we (mostly Talomé) hauled down Acatenango. And some gravel/concrete substance I already excavated from the sides of the wall.

Questions

1) Drainage
Containers don’t have good drainage. Mine are plastic. I’ve read to place about an inch of gravel in the bottom of the pots to promote good water flow. I also decided to drill extra holes on the sides of the pots.

2) Soil
The soil I have is pretty crappy, I also suspect that it has a lot of weed seeds in it. I’m psyched about the pumice/ash I got from the volcano but I don’t know how much I should mix in with the dirt I have.

3) Fertilizer
Because the soil is crap, I’ll need to fertilize. I’ve read to use a liquid fertilizer every other watering but, again, I don’t know what else I can do to boost the growing potential of the dirt I have.

4) Space
I read that pots need to be at least 18 inches across and 24 inches deep for plants to grow well. But I imagine that varies—I feel like kales and collards need a lot of root space, but what about radishes? And, since these are the plants I’m thinking of suspending, what about sweet peas and tomatoes?