How to Grow a CONTAINER Garden, CHEAP and EASY Patio Gardening

what's going on growers james biggioni coming to you live from jersey growing food is my passion and i think everyone should have the opportunity to grow their own fruits and vegetables so today i want to show you how you can grow your own fruits and veggies in containers let's go one thing that i like to emphasize on my channel is that you don't need a lot of space to grow your own food in fact you don't need any land at all you can grow in containers and pots on your own patio just like i'm doing here we've got a lot of different stuff growing on this patio and i wanted to do this to show you that you can grow food in a very simple but functional way a lot of the pollinators are out today and they're working on some of my cantaloupes here we've got some watermelon some tomatoes peppers a bunch of different stuff but this is the goal this is where we want to get to growing a lot of this stuff and soon be harvesting let me show you how i got to this point the first thing we need to focus on when growing planted containers is the container what pot we're going to actually use so there's three things we need to focus on when it comes to containers the first one is that you have to have to this is the most important you must have drainage holes at the bottom that's so important if you don't have drainage holes at the bottom of your bucket then the water is going to sit it's going to go anaerobic which means without oxygen and the roots need oxygen to grow or they're going to die so you'll have root rot and that will not be good for your plant so holes on the bottom number one so important the second thing that's important is the color of your pots right here i've got a white pot this is convenient this is not gonna absorb the sun like some of your black pots are i'll bring you right here to this black pot this was just an extra pot that i got from a fruit tree this thing is going to heat up a lot in the sun which isn't a big deal if it's the spring or the fall or you live in a northern climate but if it's a super hot climate that'll heat up too much and possibly cook your plants so the color of the pot is going to be important and there's one other important thing when it comes to growing in pots especially these five gallon pots like i'm doing right here and it must be food grade plastic so you don't want to just get one of the standard lowe's five gallon buckets you want to make sure that they're food grade so that you're safe actually growing the food in there so these pots i just got at home deep or lows they were a couple dollars but they're going to last a little while they're super light this right here would be nice to grow in these clay pots because they're porous which means that they absorb some of the water and then the roots could suck it back out of the pot but it's very heavy and they crack easily and also in the winter they'll freeze over and then unfreeze so they're not really good in a northern climate you got to bring them inside it's not ideal so that's why i love growing in these five gallon buckets right here now that we've chosen what containers we're going to be using let's focus on the soil when it comes to soil the most important thing is that you do not use native soil for your potted plants it's way too dense you want to either make your own soil or buy some potting mix so right here is a good potting mix i like happy frog but when you're buying soil make sure it's potting mix you do not want to use topsoil in your pots either that can get expensive if you want to buy your own bags of soil so what i like to do is just make my own mix let me give you my ingredients for a simple way to do it the simplest way to go about it would be one-third of compost right here i have a nice mushroom compost so we've got a third bucket full for this and then one third of peat moss right here and you can either use peat moss or cocoa core whatever one you want to use i personally like using peat moss because uh the structure of it more even though it's not as environmentally sustainable and then also you have to add perlite a third of perlite so one third of all these will give you great fertilization and nutrition with your compost and then these two are going to help with soil structure and water retention which is super important when you're going in pots this soil mixture it's about as simple as you can do it but there are a few things i would suggest adding especially if you want to grow things like cucumbers and melons things that aren't super acid loving and that's some dolomite lime so the stolomite lime is going to bring up the ph of your soil because we're adding this peat moss and this pmos is acidic so we want to make sure we're raising that soil ph back up the dolomite lime is also going to add calcium and magnesium so i'm making here about a half of a cubic foot of soil and i'm going to put two ounces of lime into that before i start mixing all this stuff together i wanted to mention something about this perlite and this pearlite is good stuff this is the bag i got it from and any ingredients and everything i use i'll put links in the description but this is good perlite this is pure i went to home depot or lowe's and i tried to get their pur perlite and i noticed on the package that it says it's enriched with miracle grow plant food i definitely do not want that so make sure you're paying attention to the stuff you're getting i just wanted a pure perlite so that's what i got here let's start getting all the stuff together now and we'll put the compost in first i'm gonna make one bucket of soil that's why i have three buckets that they're all a third of so i'll put the compost in there first then i'm gonna put the perlite in and just be careful you may wanna wear a mask when you're doing this because some of the dust and stuff can come up so just be careful next we're gonna put in the peat moss just put that in then i'm going to add the lime and there's a couple other things you can add you can add blood meal if you want and a bunch of different rock phosphates this is some rock dust this is azomite greenway this stuff is awesome i'll put links in it so i'm just going to add a nice handful of this stuff and then it suggested that you kind of just wet it down a little bit so everything doesn't get too airborne i don't like wetting it too much because i like to get a good combination of things then i'm just going to mix it with my hands because when it comes down to it playing in the dirt and playing the soil is like one of my favorite things so we're just gonna mix this up and get a nice consistency you see there's a lot of perlite in here and a lot of peat moss so you don't have to go these exact ratios this is just a good one for potted plants because you're going to find out that one of your issues is with the soil drying out the soil will dry out so quickly if you don't make a good soil mix and put in things like peat moss and perlite things that are excellent at retaining soil moisture but also building soil structure this is all mixed up good next we're going to grab our food grade 5 gallon bucket and fill it up i'll just fill it by hand one thing to note too is when you're when you're filling up your buckets and stuff make sure that you fill them up in the location where you're going to plant the stuff because once they're filled with soil and they get wet these things are going to be heavy so have them in the location have them in the spot that they're going to live and i'm not going to fill this up all the way i'm going to fill it up to about there this way i can add some compost and top dress if i want to next we want to saturate this completely fill it up with water and get it all mixed because we don't want a lot of the soil at the bottom to be like all dry we want to make sure this thing is completely saturated and we don't really have to worry about being over saturated because we have nice drainage holes at the bottom so i'm just going to continue to mix this you'll notice as i'm watering it it's starting to compact a little bit more so we'll put some more soil in just to make sure we're about three quarters full and then water it in again the water is all absorbed into our soil and it's looking really nice we're not worried about sitting water because we have the nice drainage holes at the bottom now i'm just going to show you how i transplant right here i've got a fig that i've actually uh cloned myself i did it previous in the season you can check back at some of the videos what i'm going to do is just take out some of the soil so i can easily drop this fig in you can see how wet the soil is all the way throughout that's what we want then i'm just going to loosen up the sides and you can see i reused an old pot that i got from somewhere so and then i'll just flip it upside down the roots don't look fantastic but they still look pretty good we'll drop this in actually before that i'm going to put on put some mycos on it this is a inoculant of the mycorrhizal association this is a fungus that's has forms a symbiotic relationship with the roots and they help support one another so we use some of that i'll push this place this there actually i can probably put a little more soil here and then we'll just backfill around the plant with the soil and i've got a little more soil if i need more off to the side here so it looks like i need still just a little bit more soil and i'm going to grab it so this one isn't wet yet but i'll just water it in and we want to push this down not really hard but relatively firm so we're feeling any air space and then since i added some more soil i'm just going to water it back in one more time and that's how easy it is you don't want to ever really fill your pots all the way to the top though because you want to be able to water it and allow the water to sit in there and then sink in you don't want to you know just have the soil all the way to the tippy top that's not going to be ideal for your plants another convenient thing about these five gallon buckets is the handles on the side and these leaves are a little green but that potting and that transplanting with the new fertilizer in the soil should really help it's another hot day here and tuck is actually just sitting inside watching me while we're right outside on the patio because it's just too hot for them dedicated though he's still watching out for us he's still guarding the garden but it's tough because we added a whole another section this patio so he's got more garden area to protect this guy never has a day off now that we have our pots chosen our soil made and our plants in them we're starting to grow and when you get to this point you're going to notice one thing you really need to stay on with potted plants is watering them they'll dry out ex extremely quickly especially once they get started to get really large because the root base is taking up a good percentage of the pot so it's a good idea to have some mulch in there like i have for my fig tree right here this is a nice wood chip mulch and i'm having a little bit of trouble getting wood chip mulch at this time of the year just with everything that's going on but the fig is doing great with the mulch you can see it's got some nice little figs on it so watering is again so important so a good mulch will help you i'm actually gonna get some leaves and then crush those up and use those as a mulch but a good way to know if your plants need to be watered a good way i like to know is i like to check my weight so i just watered this it's very heavy i know that so i'll come out in a day or two and i'll feel the weight if i feel like it's getting pretty light i know that i need to water you don't want your plants drying out though if they completely dry out that'll really really negatively affect them it'll make the roots go searching for water and it'll just stress the plant out potted plants and ones growing in containers like this need to be fed more often with a fertilizer than your ones growing in the ground because everything that the plant needs to get has to come from this container so i like to feed my plants regularly with some fish emulsion that's a good one i use that for basically any kind of plant and it works real well but another one that i use if i really want to get big healthy great plants is this one right here i love this product and it's a great company too it's ivy organics and this is the all-purpose it's the super blend and it's got your npk but it also has a lot of the macronutrients so it's got a lot of stuff in there that a lot of the other simple fertilizers just don't have so you can use this as a spray and it'll work for 20 gallons or you can use it in a few different ways one way i like to use it is as a top dressing so i take some of this stuff in here i'll take like a tablespoon or so mix it into here maybe a little more till i feel like it's a about right then i'll mix all this up in some of the soil that i just made then i'll go around to some of my plants like we'll say this pepper right here this one's growing real well as you can see beautiful pepper looks like we're gonna have a lot of nice peppers it's starting to flower and then i'll just put top dressing around the base of it this has the fertilizer in it so every time i water this in it'll just uh it'll just soak it all in so that's one way that i like to use this fertilizer but it's also great when you use it as a foliar spray whatever fertilizer you want to use that's up to you but just make sure you have a lot of the principles that's what's important when you're going with pots you can also use some seaweed extract and stuff like i mentioned there's a bunch of different fertilizers whatever you think works well for you then go ahead and use that one so i'm just going to water this in and that'll feed the plant nicely i want to show you some of the stuff i'm growing one of the things that i haven't shown you yet this year and i'm super excited about i have it in the food forest too right here is the red malabar spinach look at this such a cool plant a beautiful edible and this is called malabar spinach it's not a true spinach but it tastes really good and you can eat it like a spinach the reason i love this is because once spinach is basically done for the year because it gets too hot is when the malabar spinach starts to come up so it's like we're always eating these fresh greens grated stir-fry get grated salads and they have this thick succulent leaf to them full of water an earthy flavor just really a fantastic plant overall so easy to grow and i think in the tropics it grows as a perennial and just around here we grow it as an annual but it's something great you got to put into your garden you'll notice this section though how what i try to do to get more space out of the container area is i put this fence up back here so whenever you're container gardening what you've got to try to do is be as creative as possible and try to utilize the space as best you can that's why we always try to go vertical if possible i've got all my cucumbers and stuff going growing back there and then all my peppers and stuff growing in the front another thing that we should think about when we're container gardening is the how we're situating our plants and the arrangement of them for instance the location i'm in right now the south is right that direction there straight ahead of me so if i'm if i point this way that's the south and that's the north and when it comes to patios you can't really choose where you put everything but if you could try to make sure your shortest plants are on the south side and then that ascends up to your tallest plants being on the north side this way when the sun sets rises in the east it'll sit in the south and then set in the west so it'll rise in the east and hit all this stuff and then when it sets in the west it'll hit some of the stuff in the back but you want to make sure that you're not having all your tall plants in the south here because when the sun comes up and it sits in that south side if all your tall plants are on the north it'll shade everything on that far side so again shorter plants in the south and then ascending with your tallest plants in the north before i let you go i just want to show you my setup it's very basic and the reason i did that is because like i mentioned beginning i want it to be simple but functional so i just have a couple concrete blocks two here and then one here and then just a piece of wood on top of it i think it's about a two by eight or two by ten just something that's pretty wide to keep the the pots here then what i did was just put up this fencing and i fortunately found a six foot fence which is pretty rare usually i can only find like four foot ones but i got a nice six foot fence here and then put in these uh posts and just t posts and just knock them in and that's made a perfect uh area for me to trellis along getting all that extra growth space that's today's video growers thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it i hope you got something out of it i hope you're encouraged and motivated now to get out there if you have any space and get some potted plants in so you can be harvesting your own natural organic just amazing tasting food if you enjoyed the video hit the like button hit the subscribe button share with your friends don't forget to check out the merch down low and whenever you're shopping on amazon use our amazon affiliate link to start your shopping a lot of the stuff that i'm using i'll put down in the description and also we're on instagram posting stories regularly now and we're also on tick tock so check that stuff out tuck in james we'll be back at you again real soon we

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Views: 449,091

Rating: 4.9441261 out of 5

Keywords: how to, container garden, how to grow in containers, container gardening, growing in pots, how start a container garden, gardening, how to start a garden, organic gardening, container garden harvest, growing in containers, james prigioni, raised bed, raised bed garden, patio garden, patio gardening, epic gardening

Id: GTrrpF1prOY

Length: 15min 19sec (919 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020