Vegetable Container Garden

[johnkaz20]

I wanted to start a vegetable container garden and so I went to home depot today and bought several vegetable seedlings (cherry tomato, zucchini, cucumber, red pepper, butter nut squash, etc.) and several window boxes to plant them in at the recommendation of an employee there. Looking around, it seems like I am going to need MUCH bigger containers for growing these plants. Before I tear holes in the bottom and plant the seedlings I thought I'd check: I should be getting BIG pots for cucumber, tomato etc. I could use the window boxes for herbs, right?

Thanks!
John

 

[SweetMissDaisy]

The bigger the container, the better.

 

[ninnymary]

Johnkaz, I have 15 gallon containers and it is still hard to do veggies in them. The problem for me is regulating the water. It seems that I water too much and when I back off them seem to get "cooked". The only thing I plant in my window boxes are impatiens and lettuce.

Mary

 

[so lucky]

Of course, if you plant in an area that has a little shade in the heat of the day, you may be able to get by with watering less. But you can probably do herbs in the window boxes, and get some inexpensive large pots for the rest.

 

[gardentoad]

Just look around and find you some of these they work great

We had a very good year, and will be adding more in the full..right now we have 45 drums or 1/2 barrels

FYI where we live the 55 gallon drums are 10 dollars each so if you cut them in half and the are only 5 Walmart can't beat that price

Don

 

[Dave2000]

Container size can be a personal preference. Consider how much space you have available, whether you need to (or have someone else reasonably, physically able to) move them around while the damp dirt is in them. That can be a pain once you get past a single-digit # of gallons capacity.

Below a certain size per type of plant you'll be limiting the plant size, BUT at the same time you could have one plant in 20 gallons of dirt or two plants in 10 gallons of dirt, it's more about surface area to catch sunlight at some point except for the water issue. The longer your growing season the larger a pot you may need.

I usually use 5 gallon containers, a few a bit smaller, and window box sized for herbs. With those I MUST water twice a day in the heat of summer which is usually around 90F +-5 degrees in my zone. If you use a smaller container you can just grow a smaller plant and not need to water more often but be careful to limit the fertilizer you give the plant or else you will have a plant get too big for the container and lose water too quickly unless you don't mind watering several times a day or set up a drip irrigation system.

Another issue with some plants is wind. Last year I planted a grape tomato in an ~ 8 gallon pot. It grew well, I put a stake in the pot and it was about 8 foot tall before July! Great I thought, until a strong gust of wind came along one day and blew the entire thing on its side, killing the plant. The pot simply didn't weigh enough or have large enough diameter vs the leveraged force of the wind against the staked plant in the pot. Some people will put a big rock or brick in their pot to compensate a bit, or I had a few spare cinder blocks I put around some pots when I knew a lot of strong wind was coming.

With all that in mind, you might easily double your yield by using something 5 gallons or larger. I just use 5 gallon because that's the size of all those leftover plastic buckets that everything from sunflower seeds to drywall paste come in, so they were free and readily available. Some people are pickier about how their containers look though...

I should also mention that in 5 gallon buckets, most of my plants only get to about 70% the size of the same things I plant in the ground, though I suspect if my growing season were longer the difference might be greater and there's the location issue, things I have in pots are mostly shaded in the evening.

 

[johnkaz20]

Wow. Thank you everyone for your help!! I'll probably go get some bigger pots, for sure. I'm in Los Angeles so it's pretty moderate year-round. I think I misjudged how big the plants would grow. Those little seedlings at the store seemed so small and manageable!

Thanks everyone...
John

 

[so lucky]

A few years back, when my mother got so she couldn't get down to ground level for planting, at her request I got some huge pots for her to plant lettuce, cukes, tomatoes and whatever in. I bought vermiculite, perlite, peatmoss, everything she needed. I set the pots up and helped her get the seeds and plants. These pots came to about mid-thigh so were perfect for someone who couldn't kneel. The first spring she raised a little lettuce; I think that's all. She decided they were too much trouble to water. A year or two later, I spied the pots in the garage, empty. I asked what she did with all that (expensive) potting mix, thinking I could salvage it. "Oh, we threw it away..."

 

[catjac1975]

Still a good child for trying.

A few years back, when my mother got so she couldn't get down to ground level for planting, at her request I got some huge pots for her to plant lettuce, cukes, tomatoes and whatever in. I bought vermiculite, perlite, peatmoss, everything she needed. I set the pots up and helped her get the seeds and plants. These pots came to about mid-thigh so were perfect for someone who couldn't kneel. The first spring she raised a little lettuce; I think that's all. She decided they were too much trouble to water. A year or two later, I spied the pots in the garage, empty. I asked what she did with all that (expensive) potting mix, thinking I could salvage it. "Oh, we threw it away..."

 

[SuperChemicalGirl]

I actually do pretty well with cat litter buckets (and anything else I can get my hands on) for tomatoes and pepper plants, and my container ones look better than the ones in the ground. Doesn't look pretty, but I don't really care once I start harvesting!

I have to soak them daily when it gets hot here ("hot" in Maine... 80ish). They also do really well in the barrel planters, and I've gotten some plastic cow-lick buckets, too, for squash or melons that also do okay.

I've also used window planters for bulbing onions, they tend to do well in there.