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Question by Nicole: Growing vegetables in containers?
I live in South Florida. The ground in my backyard is horrible and will be a real hassle to dig up. I was thinking of growing carrots, tomatoes, beans, strawberries and a few more small things. I want to grow them all in containers. Any advice?
Best answer:
Answer by Christine
Get the biggest container you can. The larger the container, the more soil, so the less chance the plant will dry out and die. Raised beds are even better for bad native soil. You can fill a 4 foot by 8 foot bed with compost, “garden soil” and sand (1/3 of each) and raise all your vegetables in one happy bed. As for containers, carrots love tomatoes but hate strawberries. Or so the companion planting book by that name says. Beans probably should be grown by themselves, since they either get bushy or get tall and will block out the light for smaller plants. Place some gravel in the bottom of your pots, then some good quality bagged potting soil (like from Home Depot). You may need to hurry on buying the soil since about this time of year they all think we’ve stopped growing gardens and switch their inventory to Christmas things. Your pots should probably be around 24 inches wide at the top for best results. Put your pots where they wil get direct sunlight at least 8 hours a day. Be sure to check them every day to see if they are getting too dry (if you stick your finger in the soil up to 3 inches deep and it feels dry (not moist) then it needs watering. Have fun!
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oh
I’m sure I’m way off. Someone on youtube may come along and say what the
real reason is one day lol ~ ^_^
Hi Nicole D, I was thinking they’re both spice plants! Spices are naturally
insecticides/repellants. Ginger has waxy leaves too. They were still
spinning webs on my yellow onion flower pod so I had to blast everything
with pyrethrins. Plus they haven’t undergone all that much genetic
engineering/selective breeding as tomato, honeydew, and sweet potato;
during the selection process over thousands of years, a lot of hardiness
traits get selected out in favor of yield traits.
When you said the spider mites don’t seem to be bothering the onion or
ginger it made me realize what they both had in common. They are both
monocots. I wonder if these plant characters have some type of resistance
to spider mites that dicots don’t. Or it could be that the spider mites
don’t think monocots have the best leaf structure for making webs… I’m so
curious now. I have look this up. ^_^ ~ east-coast cousin
My suspicion is that sap in a dicot is easier to discover and manage as a
feeding ground since it’s in a more concentrated area on the leaf. The
phloem and xylem are more clumped together. Monocots’ phloem and xylem are
dispersed throughout the leaves. These tiny mites would have to search
large areas on the leaf, poking each section one by one until they finally
find it then soon find another spot. Whereas, on a dicot, once the area of
sap is found there is a bounty until it’s all used up.
I just read that spider mites only infest a handful of monocots compared to
hundreds of dicot species, did you find out why that is?
You’re really knowledgeable ^_^ You have to be some kind of biology major
right? What’s are your specialties?
Hey I can’t respond to your message in my inbox, I don’t know how to add
you as a contact either…
carrots are no problem growing in containers. tomatoes on the other hand depends what kind you are growing. small varieties you can grow easily in 5gal buckets bigger varieties you will need way bigger containers.
strawberries idk how you would grow those in a container we have some in the container in our aquaponics system and they are not very big at all and their isn’t much fruit to begin with. you might have to find a long container or maybe trellis it or something.
what i am growing in my container garden is
1. cherry tomatoes – they are doing great although mines alone has many problems such as aphids and blossom drop it’s not due to the container size at all.
2. egg plant- doing great besides the fact it has leaf miners. but it’s still a small plant give it a few months it’ll be producing fruit.
3. bell peppers- they seem to be doing great in 5 gals. i have some in the garden as well which is like yours horrible as hell and they are doing great in their as well. actually the ones in the garden are doing MUCH better maybe because they are getting watered more often idk.
4. lettuce- grows great in containers had no problem growing them as seeds in containers only thing is if your growing them in containers you want them wide rather then deep.
those are the plants i know and have grown in 5 gal containers besides the lettuce those were in containers only as seedlings. like i said they all do great give or take some killed off by pests or not getting enough water i believe but they are doing wonderful and im fixing them up so they can do better.
i would suggest you fix your garden up though plant what you can and amend the soil. yes it is hard work but gardening in general is hard work. my garden used to be like your and actually still is because it’s so horrible but i cleaned it out myself which took about 2 weeks just on 1 section and plants growing good now in their but sadly not my plants -.-” someone planted crap in that section but those plants are doing good. and yes are soil is horrible.
Radishes and Swiss chard do well in containers. Try herbs too. They are well suited to containers and add so much flavor to your cooking. If you have a topsy turvy planter you can do cucumbers as well.
I’m a container gardener and have grown all those things in containers.
Things you’ll want to know:
– Strawberries can grow in containers, but they vine and propagate by shoots off the mother plant. That means you’ll need a HUGE container to grow them in (at least 2.5 feet wide), and you still won’t get many berries. If you’re satisfied with a couple small strawberries on your cereal a few times a year, go for it.
– Sand has no nutritional value for plants and potting soil is made for pots. It retains the right amount of water, the good stuff has nutrition, and you drill holes in the pot bottoms, so it drains. (Also, research how to stop your soil from pouring out of the container along with the water.)
– The size of the container dictates the size of the plants only somewhat. You’re not making a carrot that can only grow 5 inches long grow bigger, by sticking it in a deep container. You buy seeds/plants that work for containers. Since your average size container isn’t the best size for standard carrots, don’t grow standard carrots. I go for the ones that don’t get any longer than 5 inches, but you’re perfectly capable of figuring out what works for you. I’ve seen beefsteak tomatoes growing in 12-inch containers. They won’t get “beefsteak” size. Huge? If you want. I’ll include a video of our garden from last week. We got a little carried away on the tomatoes this year. (We let the ones that self-seeded in with our carrots take over that container, and now we have the tomatoes taking over a corner of our yard. lol) I prefer the 5-gallon buckets from Home Depot. We grow our grape tomatoes and patio tomatoes in them. (Both are supposed to be determinate, but someone forgot to tell them that. lol) The big tomatoes I do grow in a huge container, but that’s because a good Cherokee Purple tomato is worth the extra space and effort. We grew two in one container, so the second one (the one that took over our pepper space lol) is an Earl Girl. Both could have grown alone in a 5-gallon bucket. We merely prefer sticking 2-3 tomatoes in a container. Here’s the link to the video to show you our tomatoes, carrots, and strawberries – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8lEoK08NZU&feature=plcp
– Green beans. Like all produce you want to grow, you should research them before you grow them. Bush beans are better than pole beans in a container. (The container is 1-2 feet above ground and pole beans grow to 8 feet or higher.) They grew in the container that’s the same size as our Cherokee Purple tomato container and we had six plants in it, but they don’t live a full season.
– You are free to go with the raised bed idea, if you want. It will cost a small fortune, since you need wood that doesn’t rot. (Soil rots wood, in time. Cedar last longer, but it’s costly.) Then again, if you want to go through that hassle of bringing in all the soil needed to fill it, by that time, just amend the soil you have.
– Most important piece of advice. Always do your own research before starting a garden. After all, you’re getting advice from someone who container gardens in Philly and another answerer gave you…well, I’m not sure what that was, other than maybe advertisement for raised beds. Like was the case with my bush beans – had I just researched ahead of time, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to fix something that wasn’t broken. (I removed a ton of used potting soil and replaced the container it was in, simply because I thought it was diseased. lol) Don’t expect everything to go perfectly. It won’t. Just keep track of what you learned that worked and didn’t work. Oh, and of course, have fun! 😉
Yes you can but containers can be very expensive and will require a lot more watering. Try raised bed gardening instead. A great solution to poor soil conditions. I actually have good soil but opt for raised bed gardening because I like the look of it, find it easier and less labor intensive to manage and really enjoy the high production from a small space. I have 4 – 4’x4′ boxes and produce enough vegetables to feed my family, can and freeze and still have some to sell at the farmer’s market. Do include some type of irrigation system either a micro system or simple soaker hoses. I live in zone 9b. If you are in south florida you are probably in zone 10. You can literally have a year round garden. Contact your County Agent and ask for a vegetable planting guide. It is free and gives you planting dates for both seeds and starter plants, plant spacing and days to harvest. I follow my planting guide religiously and have wonderful harvest. Check out this site and see what you think. A better, less expensive and easier care for solution as opposed to container gardening. I do keep my herbs in containers.
http://www.squarefootgardening.com
LOL
The more soil the better your yield. Check with the local nursery for vegetables that do well in containers. Chosing the right plant will make all the difference.