My housemate and I lived in a townhouse. It’s lovely, with high ceilings, hardwood floors, and an elevator that goes from the garage to the first and second floors. But townhouses, while they’re lovely to look at and live in, have one major shortcoming—no yard.

This past summer, we decided we wanted to grow some vegetables and herbs, because we like the idea of food that hasn’t been sprayed with pesticides and hasn’t sat in a truck before being delivered to the grocery store. The more we talked about it, the more excited we became at the idea of being able to go out onto the balcony and pick fresh tomatoes and basil to go with them when making spaghetti sauce.

Since all the gardening I’d done in the past was on land and not in containers, I knew I had a lot to learn about the popular form of city gardening called container gardening. Of course, I also knew right where to go for the information—the Internet has sites about every topic imaginable.

The first site I logged onto was the Virginia Cooperative Extension Site. While I don’t live in Virginia, I knew that the extension departments of state governments have lots of information about agricultural and other topics. This site has good information about what size container to use for vegetables and what types of containers not to use.

Next, I logged onto Windowbox.com. I like this site because it has lots of information about flowers. While we didn’t grow any flowers, this site is a great place to go to find numerous varied articles about gardening in containers.

In addition, this site has a special feature, “the Floracle,” where you can type in your answers to various templated questions and get back suggestions about which plants would be best for you and your needs. The features change on this site on a regular basis.

When I went there, one of the features gave directions on how to build a trellis for a garden on a balcony. The directions are well written and easy to follow. There was also a great article about making a container water garden.

At Windowbox, you can even order the gardening supplies you’ll need. Another section I liked was the section called “Do Some Good,” which is about “changing the world with urban gardening.” If you’re environmentally conscious, I think you’ll like that part too.

You can even ask the experts on this site. These folks can answer questions about botany, taking care of your container plants, how to design and plan your garden, and recipes to use for the veggies you grow.

At Design, you can find some special gardens for your balcony or roof. There are directions for planting a garden that will attract butterflies and hummingbirds, a garden that will “shine at night and smell wonderful too,” and even a container garden of plants with a tropical flavor like hibiscus and canna lilies. Unfortunately, my housemate is allergic to flowers that smell, so we couldn’ t try these, but they certainly look like they would be lovely.

We got most of our information from the Container Gardening site. I must say that this site is the most complete site about urban gardening that I could find. There are a lot of tips like don’t use a container with a narrow opening” on the front page of this site.

We used the excellent information about what type of growing mixture to use. Another great piece of the front pages is the table with different types of vegetables. It tells you what type of container and even gives recommendations about what type of variety you should buy.

We used a couple of the tomatoes recommended, and the results were outstanding. The feature I like most on this site is the drop down menu guide sheets feature. It’s divided into several sections, including Herbs, Vegetables, Perennials, and Bulbs. You can choose what type of plant you want information on. This site had more information on growing herbs than any other container gardening site.

There is another great place to go for information about plants and how to grow them—your local nursery, of course. We bought our plants from a nursery after the ones from the department store withered and died. The people who work at the nursery were very helpful.

We even discovered a nylon trellis that you can tie to balcony railings. It did a good job of holding the beans and cucumbers we planted. Now you’re probably dying to know how our garden turned out. I must say that for a first garden in containers, we were very pleased.

We’re still eating tomatoes and cucumbers from it. We planted two varieties of green beans, but we really had a difficult time telling the difference in taste. I discovered that a green pepper allowed to ripen becomes a red pepper, something I didn’t know ahead of time. Since red peppers are so expensive in the stores, we planted two pepper plants and enjoyed the sweet taste of red peppers in our stir frys and salads.

We planted lots of herbs, and I found out how really good fresh herbs are in salad. We grew enough so that we can make herb vinegar for Christmas presents this year. Now we’re getting ready to plant our fall container garden, and we’re looking forward to enjoying such treats as lettuce, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and carrots. I hope you’ll have as much fun container gardening as we are.