Theme Containers – Plant a Pizza Garden

Gardening can be quite serious, if you want it to be. But when you are worrying about sterilizing soil and pulling weeds, remember that gardening is suppose to be fun. One fun project that you can plant in your container garden is a pizza container. Pizza containers are a fun theme gardening project for kids and adults who are kids at heart.

Just like most container vegetable gardens, a pizza container needs to be large enough to accommodate the plants that you plant. This means a 5 gallon container for full sized tomato plants, and a 3 gallon container for smaller tomatoes such as cherry tomatoes or tiny tom.

Plants that you can include in your pizza container garden include:

• Tomatoes such as Roma, better boy, early girl, or sweet million.

• Peppers such as sweet bell or banana pepper.

• Herbs including basil, oregano, chives, thyme, fennel and parsley

If you are planting tomatoes, place them at least 24 inches apart in the flower pots and stake or cage them with heavy gauge wire. Plant your garden according to the mature size of the plants. Tomatoes should go in the back of the pots, followed by peppers and then tall herbs such as basil. Place smaller herbs such as oregano in front of your containers.

Put the containers where they will receive 6 hours of full sun. Harvest the herbs continually to keep them from becoming leggy, and the vegetables as they become ripe. When you have enough vegetables and herbs, you can make pizza sauce.

One easy recipe for pizza sauce:
Saucepan
Cutting board
Spoon
Knife
Blender
Roma Tomatoes
Red pepper flakes
Sweet red pepper
sugar or grated carrots
oregano
basil
thyme
garlic
onion or chives

Blanch tomatoes by plunging them in boiling water and then into cold water. The skins will peel away immediately. Remove seeds (Roma have seeds in a central chamber. These seeds are easiest to remove. to remove the seeds, cut open the tomato and scrape away the seeds with a spoon).

Puree the remaining tomato meat in a blender and place the puree in a saucepan. Bring the tomato puree to a simmer. Continue to cook away the water until the tomato puree forms a thick sauce. Add sugar or grated carrots to remove the bitter flavor. Add crushed red pepper flakes or red pepper powder, sweet red pepper, oregano, basil, thyme, garlic and onion to taste. Continue to simmer until the sauce reaches the desired consistency. You can either serve the pizza sauce fresh or can it using a water bath method to save it for later.

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