Honestly It’s not all that difficult to build a container vegetable garden, and it’s really kinda fun. It basically only takes 4 things: A container, some dirt, plants or seeds and some space. Simple right?
How To Start A Container Vegetable Garden
So let’s try and answer a few questions you might have. Like why use containers in the first place. How to choose a container for your vegetables. What’s the best soil for a container vegetable garden? How do you choose which vegetables to grow? Then there’s the question of how to start a container garden on the cheap. Last let’s look at 4 cheap container vegetable gardening ideas. Before anything else though how ‘bout you…
Make a garden plan
Big garden, small garden, short garden, tall garden. It’s always a good idea to make a garden plan, before you start. A small single container garden might just require looking at the pot and saying I want plant A here, plant B here, and plant C there. If your garden is a little bigger then just draw it out on graph paper or even use a simple free garden planner like this one.
Why Use Containers?
Here’s one good reason. Container gardening makes it super easy to grow vegetables. What’s more you get higher yields with a lot less work. Furthermore, one container of tomatoes will produce about 20 pounds of those delicious red orbs and not only that, it takes less than 2 minutes to weed.
Need another reason? Container vegetable gardens can go just about anywhere, a patio, balcony, or rooftop. what’s more you can hang them, stack them, put them on railings, or in a small spot by the door. Heavens, you can even have a full herb garden on a kitchen windowsill.
How To Choose A Container For Your Container Vegetable Garden
When you’re looking for your garden containers aesthetics are very important, if you don’t like what your plants are in you won’t enjoy your garden.
What can I use for container gardening?
You can use just about anything that will hold dirt. You can use buckets, baskets, clay pots, boxes, bathtubs, troughs, half whiskey barrels, fabric grow bags etc. Just be sure that it has drainage holes in the bottom.
In some respects the bigger your container the better. One reason is that large pots hold more soil. Furthermore more soil means more moisture, and that means you don’t have to water as much. Bigger also allows you to grow more plants. Most of the time you want to look for containers that are at least 10 inches wide and 12 inches deep. But that’s not always the case, it’s kinda hard to put a bathtub on a windowsill. That being said you want.
The Right Plant For The Right Container
I think more correctly put, you want the right container in the right spot for the right plant. Like I said before, windowsills won’t fit big pots, so tomatoes are out. However some small pretty terra cotta pots or mason jars full of herbs, that’s perfect.
The Best Soil For A Container vegetable garden
Ideally, you want each container to have a soil mix that best suits the vegetable planted in it. For instance, tomatoes like a slightly higher level of phosphorus & potassium, and a moisture-retaining, well-drained soil full of organic matter.
A good starting soil for your container-grown vegetables is a mix that is well-drained, well-aerated, full of nutrients, and has a fairly neutral PH. That way you can adjust your soil to fit your plants needs. you can make your own compost to help with that (we’ll cover that in a different post).
How To Choose Which Vegetables To Grow
So how do you choose the best vegetables to grow in your container garden? Well that depends. What do you like to eat? What time of year is it? Is your garden inside or outside? How much space do you have?
So here’s an example. Let’s say you have a total of 16 square feet of container space in separate planters on your south facing balcony, and it’s summer. Depending on what you like to eat, you could plant something like this. 2 Tomato plants, 1 pea plant, 8 leaf lettuce, 1 squash plant, 18 spinach, 2 pepper plants, 4 bush beans, 27 beets, 16 carrots, and 2 cucumbers.
What are the best vegetables for your container vegetable garden?
Here’s 11of the best vegetables to grow in containers, plus their sun and soil needs
Tomatoes
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Deep, moist, good drainage
Peas
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Good drainage, enriched or loamy soil
Potatoes
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Good drainage, loamy soil
Squash
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Rich soil, good drainage
Salad Greens (lettuces)
- Sun Exposure: Partial sun
- Soil Needs: Moist, fertile soil
Peppers
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Moist soil with good drainage
Cucumber
- Sun Exposure: Full sun to partial shade
- Soil Needs: Good drainage with moist, fertilizer-enriched soil
Radishes
- Sun Exposure: Full sun to partial shade
- Soil Needs: Good drainage with moist soil
Beets
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Good drainage, loamy soil
Spinach
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Good drainage, loamy soil
Eggplant
- Sun Exposure: Full sun
- Soil Needs: Good drainage, evenly moist soil
Start A Container Vegetable Garden On The Cheap
Believe it or not you can start a container vegetable garden for pretty much just the cost of some seeds and some soil. And just in case you’re interested you can make your own potting mix. It’s basically just peat moss, vermiculite, perlite, sand, and shredded bark or compost.
Do It Cheap By Starting Small
One of The best ways to keep the initial cost of a container garden down is to start small. Start with a couple of pots and some seeds and soil, then build from there.
Where Can I Find Free Containers For My Garden?
Here’s a short list of places to find free containers for your plants. Most of the time if you ask these places will be happy to give them to you. Home Depot or Lowes, Bakeries, Recycling Centers, Restaurants, Craigslist, Dumpsters, then there’s your own trash.
Finding Cheap Gardening Containers
You can find cheap garden containers all over the place. Check yard sales, thrift shops, flea markets, and dollar stores.
5 Cheap Container Vegetable Garden Ideas
These 5 ideas are super simple and what’s more they’re a great way to recycle used materials.
One-Pot Herb Garden
For this one you will need more of a horizontal container (think along the lines of a dishpan, or litter box instead of a 5 gal bucket) at least 10 inches deep. If you have the space for it a half barrel would be good. Make sure it has a way to drain, and fill it with soil. Depending on the size you could get most of your favorite herbs in one container.
Here’s another idea. Use a half barrel Plant 1 tomato in the center and surround that with basil, parsley, rosemary, oregano and thyme. Then you can harvest pasta sauce.
Mason Jar Herb Garden.
This one is just a simple classic windowsill kitchen herb garden. It’s exactly what it sounds like, mason jars full of herbs. Just an FYI since you can’t easily drill holes in glass, you might want to put some small rocks in the bottoms for drainage. Also plant what you use in the kitchen.
Old Tire Container Vegetable Garden
Ok so let me just put it out there I’m a fan of tire gardens. As a matter of fact my very first raised bed garden was a tire garden that had a trellis between 2 tires. They keep the soil moist and well contained and each tire is plenty big enough for multiple plants so companion planting is not an issue. They seem to work best if used like a retaining wall.
Bucket Garden
Everybody should sing the praise of the humble 5 gallon bucket. They Make awesome containers for a huge variety of vegetables. Let’s be real, they don’t take up a lot of room on a crowded patio or deck, they are big enough to hold a tomato cage, and they hold just enough potting soil for roots to thrive. Each bucket can be home to one vegetable plant and perhaps two or three smaller herbs or annual flowers.
Salvaged Gutter Garden
Here’s a fun one. You take old aluminum gutters, give them a good cleaning, then secure them to a wall, or a stand (sawhorses work well) and fill them with dirt. Don’t make it more than 12 sections wide or you won’t be able to reach the middle easily.
This nifty setup is great for things like snap peas, Greens (lettuce, spinach, and colorful salad greens), or strawberries, pretty much anything small.
Final Word
Yep so there you have it just a quick how to, on starting a container vegetable garden. The first thing to do is make a plan. You want to go ahead and choose containers for your vegetables. Remember gardening in containers makes things supper easy, and you can use just about anything that will hold dirt so don’t forget to choose the right container for the right plant.
When you’re choosing your vegetables keep in mind that there’s a lot of choices, you only read about 11 of them here. The biggest thing is to choose what you like to eat, otherwise you’re just wasting your time. There’s a lot of ways to start your garden on the cheap. So have fun getting started and if you need some ideas there’s 5 fun ones here in this post.