Starting a Vegetable Garden in Containers

Growing your own vegetables in your garden can save you both time and money. Aside from that, the taste of fresh veggies is incomparable to store bought. Even without much space, it’s easy to start a vegetable garden in containers at home!

When choosing veggies for your container garden, consider a container appropriate for the size of crops such as beans, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, and radish. When planting in containers, proper spacing is important. One sturdy plant is better than several weak ones. Crowding chokes root systems will slow growth and poor production. Grapes and berries can do well also, though some take a while to get established. They will eventually bring on more fruits each year. 

It doesn’t require much space to grow most vegetables. Where space is limited, you can grow a mini-garden indoors or outdoors. If you have a good sun, access to water and enough containers, growing a full garden is easy. Windowsills, balconies and doorstep areas can be used, as well as empty jugs of milk and juice, pails, plastic buckets, or even cans… get creative!

One great advantage of growing vegetables and spices in containers involves the advent of the upside-down gardening. Crops with the likes of tomatoes, basil, parsley, rosemary, and peppers do well with this approach. The idea is that the vines will cascade downward instead of growing up a stake. A grow box can be treated by punching perforations through the bottom of a container. The other option is to purchase a device specially designed for this purpose. Upside gardens do not require a great deal of space and are perfect for balconies and patios.

Vertical garden planters are also very useful for small spaces and add a beautiful feature to your outdoor wall!  Some vertical garden planters even have a great “self-watering” feature!

With container vegetable gardening, you no longer need to worry about poor soil types in your yard and bad drainage, or heavy-duty tiller to break up hard clay and rocks. There is no weeding to worry about and you can change the looks of your container placements by simply moving them around anytime to a place you wanted to.  

However, it is a good idea to use a quality potting soil and add some drainage discs in the bottom of your container to avoid over-saturated soil if your pot does not have a built-in drain. Equally important, seeds and soil must properly be taken cared of in your vegetable container garden.

Seeds do not always have to be bought. Reasonably fresh dill, anise, fennel, coriander and other seeds already on the spice rack should grow. If not, they are too old to add much to food anyway and should be replaced. Scoop out seeds from vegetables you’ve bought, dry them a week or so before planting.