To me, a pot ghetto is potted roses you are waiting to plant, not ones you have in nice pots because you want them in post. I have them where it is most convenient for me to water (especially now that we live in Arizona East).

I have a pot ghetto. I have a variety of things in these containers. Not all of them are "pots". I have glads, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, and lettuce in Earth Boxes. I have my band roses, clematis, dahlias, and hibiscus in smaller plastic pots. I have eggplants and large roses in 5-gallon buckets. They are on my patio and in part of my driveway and by the front walkway. The roses will be going in the ground when the weather cools off and I see how many spots I have for them. I have also seen other pot ghettos in other people's yards as well. As long as you keep everything watered it is not a big deal. I have noticed that even in the heat many of the potted roses are doing better than those in the ground. That is probably because of the extra watering and not having gone through the bad Easter freeze.

My plants that are waiting for cooler weather to get planted or waiting to get a little bigger, are mostly by the outside faucet, so that is my pot ghetto. I have a few tropical plants in pots on my deck and some on the ground in front of the deck. I have lots more deck space, but I don't want to spend but so much time watering. Brandy

My pot ghetto is on the back concrete patio, where it's easy to water. Bands and a few seedlings are in 1 gallon size pots to leg up, larger roses like Ashdowns or High Countrys go into 2 gallon pots, and then I have a few HT's and Austins in larger pots. No 24" pots here, but I wouldn't have any place to overwinter them.

Cheers,
Michelle

My pot ghetto is in my backyard which consists of a large area covered with concrete aggregate. The lawn is all gone, sacrificed to roses. The only way to grow more roses is to use pots. I have a few 24" pots. They can be heavy to handle, and I am only 5 feet tall and about 105 pounds. I re-pot them every year and they are doing well. But the big tall roses really need to be in the ground to grow their best. I finally had to get rid of my pot ghetto Royal Highness because even with a 24-inch pot, it was not doing half as well as the Royal Highness in the ground.

LOL I used to think that I was the only one with a pot ghetto! I didn't even know what it was called. Thanks goodness for gardenweb.

My pot ghetto consists of roses in black pots of differing sizes that are waiting for a regular spot in one of my garden beds. Most are roses that started out bareroot or bands that have been purchased and I repotted to bigger pots to facilitate growth.
This year I had to pot up several to the pot ghetto to act as my intensive care unit for damaged roses due to the Big Easter Freeze (TBEF) we had this year. That helped me to pay a little more special attention to those damaged plants and give them a bit more TLC than the other roses got. I really think it helped me save the life of several roses.
John

I have a pot ghetto on the back deck consisting of several bands of roses and a varigated weigala that I realy, realy, realy needs to get in the ground (poor thing has spent two years in a pot).

I also have another pot ghetto on both sides of the front porch that consists of full-size roses, a PJM rhodie, some hostas, some creeping phlox, a start from a rose I moved a while ago and a few other things. The roses really have to go into the ground but the rest I can overwinter under a bale of straw if I have to.

I think one of the ghettos is going to grow as the local Agway has trees and shrubs on sale for 30% of (and I am sure perinnials will go on sale soon).

No, no, not 24" That's not a pot ghetto, that's a permanent installation!
My ghetto takes up about a third of my driveway this time of year - There are the roses in 8" pots waiting to be planted (I'll get around to it now that the hot spell has broken), perennials sitting around in nursery pots and paks waiting to be planted, a few annuals WTBP, and the two dozen or so tender roses in pots varying from 10 to 16" that are enjoying life outdoors and flowering away - Blush Noisette, Safrano, Slater's Crimson China, Eugene de Beauharnais, Gruss an Aachen (all the stuff I shouldn't be growing). Plus some minis. Also, a fig tree,a lemon tree, a big canna, a bay tree, a sweet olive........

Well, see, redsox, the most important question (statement) of all was the very first one...."I'm not sure I get the whole pot ghetto thing." LOL! I don't think any of us ever really set out to HAVE a pot ghetto...it's not like looking at your yard/garden and thinking "Let's see, a bunch of mismatched pots and plants that don't go together would look good right here!" ;~D

Things planted in 24" pots? That's "container gardening." Somebody did that on purpose, LOL. Now pot ghettos sort of just happen...because you have small roses that need to grow a little before being put into the ground (or into a bigger pot,) you didn't quite have the bed ready but there were all these plants at the garden center that would look great/be gone by the time the bed IS ready, there was a sale at the garden center, it followed you home (I think you are probably getting the idea.) :~))))))

I have pint size pots up to 5 gallon pots. Tons come and go, some actually manage to get planted along the way...

They are spread throughout the garden, usually on pathways, always within the range of the sprinkler system, and during the summer, in a more shaded locations...

I'll never consider the garden finished until they are all planted, and since there are still more coming in the mail, I don't see that happening any time soon :)

I prefer "pot condo". ;-)

Well, it used to be in the beds, and it still is, pots scattered here and there (that is how Excellenz von Schubert came to be in its current and now permanent location) among the others, wannabes that they are, and the rest are on the front porch. I have to clear a path for the mailperson. He's a good sport. 'Cause in addition to Baby Faurax and Marchesa Boccella and Tiffany attacking his path to the front door, now Leana on the other side of Tiff has become a beastie. I guess I could make one of those arches out of the two of them as an entry way, but I digress...

To me, a pot ghetto is a collection of plants in pots waiting to be planted in their permanent places. Plants that are to remain in pots permanently are permanent container plants. I have a lot of permanent container plants and a small ghetto. Some from the ghetto will go in the ground and some will go into containers permanently. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Barbara

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

LOL!

My pot ghetto was so big a couple years ago that when we terraced the back area of the property, I was able to fill in all the terraces and new areas with plants without buying a thing. Since then I've kept it under better control--if I don't have a spot for a plant, I don't buy it. Poor 'Alister Stella Grey' noisette climber languished in a little pot for probably 4 years before he got a spot in the ground. Yet, he forgave me.

I get it now.

I have a medium-sized pot ghetto alongside my carport. I used to have roses out in the yard too, but the lawn-mower people kept running them down, no matter how often I admonished them about it, (you know, you can explain things to people, but you can't understand for them). So, I got disgusted and created a pot ghetto near the carport where I could control everything. I may have 20 or so 24" pots snuggled there. Watering is easier since I do it overhead off a home-made system, and I water them for 30 minutes every other day, (we are on water restrictions because of the drought here in the southeast). Ferilizing is easier too, and I still have the roses I want right at hand. Once upon a time, in another life, I looked after over 400 roses in another garden, but now that I am unencumbered, have only about fifty. A gracious plenty, I assure you. Besides, our local society has a Memorial Garden downtown with 45 or so in it, and that takes care of the desire for more. I have never been a big fan of HTs, but can tolerate 45 of them rather well downtown. Here at the house, I have all Chinas and they are very disease resistent, yet give me the blooms and colors I like. As far as room for a pot ghetto is concerned, I can move the pots around into as many combinations of bloomers and colors as I want depending in the amount of sun the roses like and will tolerate. I just have to remember that roses in pots need watering and fertilizing more frequently then roses in the ground because they tend to drain more quickly and the ferilizer moves through the soils faster then otherwise. I'm very happy with my pot ghetto, and wouldn't change a thing about it.

I was trying so hard not to get a pot ghetto. But I started wintersowing this year, so I had a ton of milk cartons on the back deck. Then I put some of the wintersown plants in pots so they could get a little bigger before I planted them. Then I bought some roses on sale and still don't have the bed ready for them. I've got most of it cleaned out as I've been planting as the weather cooled down here but I still have four roses, one lobelia, and two hardy geraniums that are in the same pot because I ran out of pots for them. I think I can get the geraniums planted out this week but I still don't know where that last lobelia is going.

Redsox, you can never ask too many questions and the ones you usually ask are good ones. Banders and I agree on what a pot ghetto vs a container garden is. To me it just gets too hot here to keep anything in a black container, so I have a bazillion terra cotta colored plastic pots that I transfer everything into. My real pot ghetto is all the empty pots that are lying around waiting to be used. I try not to over do it, but I do save some of the black plastic pots too. This spring after 20 years of collecting pots, I organized and pitched a bunch of empties and although it still wouldn't pass Martha Stewarts muster, it looks 100% better to me.

I now have a new pot ghetto (besides the 2 I described earlier). This one is beside the house, in the shade. Agway had a sale and I got a bunch of hostas and 4-5 viburnum. There is no way I will get them in the ground this year but the prices were too good to pass up.

On the upside, I did get 3 roses planted on Saturday so the pot ghetto beside the front porch has shrunk a bit. Then if I move the hostas from there over to the new shade pot ghetto I can point out to WS the "progress" I'm making on shrinking the porch ghetto down - LOL!

Meryl - Don't even get me started on the empty pots (which I did clean up over the weekend) and now there are several hundred pots in the lean-to, waiting for March when I start my veggie seeds.

My pot ghetto started as 'sick bay'. Then I discovered that roses actually grow in that spot. So some became permanent. My problem is the desire for lots of wonderful roses and a postage stamp sized yard. I am currently forcing myself to get rid of many of the roses there. I plan to actually put a few (maybe 4) in the ground there. Here it is and should be gone soon. I'll keep just 10, 6 for the front of the garage (on driveway) and 4 in back (on patio.)
{{gwi:314698}}
Nancy

Mine is always 1/2 little roses growing on and 1/2 roses taken from the soil because they were not happy in that location and I am trying to find a new place for them. Sometimes they are not what I expected them to be ( usually the color of the flower) and I am seeing if I can get them to do better or else find a home for them with someone else. A few are ones that were struggling and I am trying to revive them. Some of my best shrubs have been nursed or revived in the pot ghetto and so I don't see it as a bad thing. My pot sizes range from 6" to 15 gallon cans!

I had just bought a new house and so, being excited about
having a yard, I bought a dozen roses bareroot intending to
plant them in the ground. I put them in black plastic 5
gallon pots to start out with the idea that I'd plant them
later. Well, I bought my house in the winter and by the
time spring and summer came I realized that when some of
trees got leaves and the position of the sun shifted in the
sky that the area was really too shady (partial sun) for
good roses, even though there are 6 bushes out there to
this day that the previous owner planted. They mostly get
leaves with an occasional bloom here and there, which is
not exactly what I had in mind.

So faced with a dozen homeless roses, I resolved to just
leave them in their pots. I even added 5 more plus a
climber (in a 24" pot). 10 of them are in terra cotta pots
and 7 of them are still in the 5 gallon black plastic.
They are way too big and old (6 years now) for their little
pots now, but they manage to produce enough blooms to keep
me happy despite being cramped. They are all arrayed on
my driveway, which is used primarily as a place to put
my roses, although I grow dahlias, herbs, heliotrope,
strawberries, geraniums, lavender, and cactus/succulents
along with them. I have more plants in pots than I have
in the ground, because most of my space is shaded and the
areas that are not are lawn (sorry, but I love having
a nice, manicured lawn).