Fire Island hosta with Pineapple Sage (October)

Sage went to the basement, hosta sits in a foam cooler stuffed with leaves in our screened-in porch up against the house ...

Here's another of Fire Island (August):

The rosemary comes inside and lives in the back room along with most of the other potted herbs for easy harvesting. Right now we've got a marjoram, an oregano or two, two rosemaries (different varieties), a parsley, and a couple thymes. Chives are in the basement.

Another potted hosta (July):

It comes out of the bicycle and has its own foam cooler next to Fire island.

Pepper (I think that's Big Daddy), Tomato (Striped Roman), Blueberry (Sunshine Blue):

Tomatoes get cut down at the end of the season, blueberries live in the basement over winter, and the peppers live in the back room so long as they continue to produce

Like this one (Cornito Giallo) there now ... we've got a Jimmy Nardello and a Yum-yum back there, too, along with the herbs ... it's a bit of a jungle.

It's pepper ripened:

(It's outside home was just around the corner, next to that table ... and yes, it's more or less blocking this door ... it's heavy, and the pot is slick; that's as far as it got.)

Wow....absolutely charming.

We don't grow much in pots anymore - too much work :-) But we used to grow veggies in pots on the driveway - the backyard is almost all shade so the driveway is the only sunny place with space available suitable for veggies. We never used fancy pots - just cheap plastic one that offered suitable sizes. The most common pots were/are big plastic storage containers with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage. DH still uses them for growing garlic - the cloves are planted in the fall, overwintered in the garage and then brought out onto the driveway in early spring (late March) to produce bulbs by mid-late July. We get enough garlic from the pots to meet our needs for the year even though we are fairly heavy garlic users. These bulbs produce cloves with VERY strong flavour so you only need one or two of them in most dishes.

DH's sister moved in with us early last summer. She likes salads so we added lettuce and basil to things we will grow in pots. Cherry tomatoes are one thing we still grow in the pots so we will grow a few more. Over the years we have also grown strawberries, peas, and pole beans, as well as mums for fall color and other perennials waiting to find a home in the ground.

An old picture of various edible things growing in the pots:

the army of watering cans cracked me up ....

ken

LOL! I always used a hose to water but DH prefers to use a watering can so he can let the water come to the ambient air temperature before watering…!

Most of my pots are permanent plantings and they don’t need much watering. Just a few times in high summer.

This urn is a cache pot for my ’Blue Elf’ aloe in summer.

tj

The watering can in my picture isn't for the potted plants shown ... they get their water straight from the hose ... but that is the filling zone for things the hose doesn't reach ... usually new plantings that need to be watered in in one of the gardens and some of the pots around the other side of the house ... because it's easier to use a watering can if the shrubs by the other faucet are full of bees.

I love pots for annuals, tropicals and hosta..I have a lot of roots..I hated the planting and fall digging up when I didn't use pots..the drawback is storing them over the winter..but to me it's worth it 💕..

woodyoak..I have a collection of watering cans too..and fill them like your DH to use later..

Lovely pictures. Thank you, Ken, for starting all of these beautiful threads. Winter food for the soul!

I have party tubs and bins like wookyoak uses for a lot of stuff. I keep a container garden on the sunny south side of my kitchen. Right now most of the bins have spring flower bulbs in them. Four of them are split into pairs, and each pair has a mini-greenhouse top on them. They are also buried in leaves and have a surround of party tubs that are full of dirt, but have nothing in them for the winter. Parsley under one house, cilantro and carrots under the other. I was harvesting parsley for New Years :) Pretty sure with the weather recently it's end of season for both pairs. But a great season extender setup overall. I'm betting the parsley will snap back decently when it warms up again, and the other pair under a house will see early roots and greens sown and maybe starting to harvest before the rest of the gardens are ready to use.

Trash can planters

Pretty pots/plants

Here are my patio evergreens. Zone 5, Chicago area, on January 22, 2022:

Today, January 25, 2022

Many of these are stunning, others inspiring. What kind of potting soil do you use for veggies Woodyoak? I want to grow more of them but have very little room. Last year I grew some Roma tomatoes from seed, left a little pot on the ground which rooted through the hole and it became the biggest tomato plant of all and wasn't even planted.

Getgoing, I think I remember you from last year when you posted about growing things from seed. You have a great balcony garden don't you? Lots of nice indoor plants too.

Here are a few of my pots.

Rose, Petite Pink Scotch. The leaves are about the size of a kernel of popcorn. Blooms about dime sized. Stays pretty happy in a pot for years.

Urn

Crepuscule rose in a pot

Love that teapot!

erasmus_gw, your memory is excellent. Thank you for the compliments. My plants and garden appreciate it. Your tabletop rose is beautiful. What is the size of the pot? It looks pretty big (14") but it is sitting on a glass table! The urn looks good too.

DD, your teapot is wonderful.

erasmus - the soil in the veggie pots is a mixture of things - bagged potting soil, compost from our compost heap and bagged sheep or cow composted manure. There’s no particular formula - we just aim for lots of godd organic matter and good drainage.

Thanks guys. I love my little teapot too. It's not really very functional - small, and dries out very quickly - but I hit upon the portulaca to fill it and they seem to thrive there. (as apparently did the mice who lived in it in the garage last winter. Yuck. I'm leaving the potting mix in it this winter haha!)

I've seen a large tea cup that kind of goes with it and have never gotten around to getting it.

erasmus, what a welcoming entrance! Stunning!

:)

Dee

is that a variegated nasturtium? .. way cool

One of my favourite coleus containers.

Almost everything in this corner is in pots, including the hosta. The tree has roots that don’t allow much to grow so this is my solution .

I’m a bit crazy, I know.

Ken, yes it is a variegated nasturtium. 'Alaska' Nasturtium. And it's planted with dark leaved begonias and a 'Midnight Rose' Heuchera. I see there was also a hosta in there but it was completely overwhelmed by the rest of the plants and you couldn't even see it unless you went looking for it.

I'm glad you are starting these threads, I've been looking through my photos and I'm reminded how much I like that Heuchera, which I lost and I want to get it again. The 'Alaska' is one I've used often, I love the foilage.

'Alaska' Nasturtium

'Midnight Rose' Heuchera

The second container is just one gardenia with petunia in it. I am reminded of how much I enjoyed that container that summer and I need to do it again. It kept pushing out very fragrant blooms all summer. And really to me, the only thing that smells better than a gardenia is a rose. Or is it? I'm not sure I could choose one. [g]

I'm so enjoying seeing everyone's pots! I like getting new ideas. And it has been fun looking through old photos and seeing the changes in my tastes and gardens.

One joy in spring is to plant up pots of annuals that live on my deck all season. A lot of them are common petunias, marigolds, but it's something I always look forward to. I might have a color scheme in mind, but it may change depending on what I find in the nurseries.

Some bright looks...

Some years leaning pink....

I have cannas that I overwinter in my daylight basement in their pots. These have been fairly easy to over winter this way.

Elephant Ear, Thai Giant

They overwinter in a sunny, two-car, loft garage that is frost free but too cold for most humans.

My Coleus corner. I start new each year so I can try different ones.

Sandy - Wow, that is a LOT of pots! And a lot of Coleus plants. I love coleus too, but I haven't grown it in awhile. I did when I was doing a lot of pots but it became more work than I could keep up with so I cut back to a bare minimum of pots. They all look so cheerful and I love that ceramic bunny!

(I'm counting this as a pot LOL!)

Can you spot the pot?

mxk you appear to be a fellow blue pot lover lol!

Other than the obvious blue pot on the upper left, I think I see another blue pot on the right, underneath the reddish plant. I think I see Waldo peeking out too... lol!

:)

Dee

"mxk you appear to be a fellow blue pot lover lol!"

I am! I wish I could find another dark purple pot like the one on the front porch with the hosta in it -- I picked it up a few years ago and have never found another pot in a similar color.

"Other than the obvious blue pot on the upper left, I think I see another blue pot on the right, underneath the reddish plant"

You got it! There's only one pot in the pic -- the other blue you see by the Blood Grass is B&B salvia spires :0)

EVERYTHING on my balcony had to be in a pot!

Looking out the window and not a pot to be seen at the moment but my orchid said screw it and it decided I need some color to brighten my day and I can't wait for spring.

Pots on the back patio after running out of space

^^ Those ferns are gorgeous!

My biggest pot, half whiskey barrel. Planted with Komodo Dragon hosta. Firat pic in springtime, second now. I cover most of my pots with shredded leaves and leave them out all winter here in SW Michigan.

We should do away with such harmful language as "running out of space" as it relates to gardening. ;)

LOL

We have a LOT of plants in pots, mostly in nursery containers but over the past few years we have added more decorative containers, in particular after my wife caught the hypertufa bug. Initially that was the mold style but later on that became the draped style. No doubt the draped style ones are much more eye catching. Here's an example of a couple of different styles from mid-April last year.

'Chinese Sunrise' is putting on its bright spring face and behind it 'Guacamole' is getting ready for another show season.

We decided last year we'd take out the Fatsia japonica that was in our little strip beside the carport and put in a display with 4 of our larger draped hypertufa pots. The biggest one in the back we call Empress and it contains an 'Empress Wu' -I mean what else could you do- and the one just in front it has a 'Katherine Lewis'. Below a different angle from early May.

We're not adverse to repurposing, on a variety of levels, and here we've repurposed an old family heirloom: my wife's grandmother's old Beatty wringer washer which has an old enameled double boiler hanging from the side. That's 'Fragrant Bouquet' up front.

A neighbour gave us two of these funky hoops about 15-20 years ago and over the past few years they've been home to succulents. They're starting to rot however and will have to be replaced, not with something else but with a new-built version. Yes, I've been known to hit my head on them but that won't stop me....

Pieter

Wow, everyone, such lovely and creative pots and planters and such beautiful gardens! So nice to look at on a cold (frigid!) winter day. Such wonderful inspiration for thoughts of one's spring garden!

Thank you all for sharing!

:)

Dee

P.S. Pieter I almost got bit by the hypertufa bug - I actually saved containers and forms but never got around to buying the actual supplies to make the hypertufa. Part of me regrets not following it through and have thoughts of re-attempting. Part of me is glad I didn't succumb. I tend to over do things at times lol. Your wife's creations are lovely! And have me thinking.....

Pieter, I love your draping pot. I made so many a few years ago and what a fun project. The ones I added more concrete lasted way better then some that I made but it certainly helps to put a drain hole in the bottoms. Must be time to do some more in the spring. They certainly add to the beauty of the hosta and other plants. Your wife did well