How to Grow Vegetables in Containers - A Step by Step Guide || Black Gumbo

welcome to black gumbo southern gardening today we're going to talk about growing vegetables in containers well containers like these over here are very useful for gardeners there's many reasons to garden in containers maybe you don't have space maybe you don't have room maybe you live in an apartment maybe you just simply like to extend your space and add some more things containers are very helpful when you need to grow something that perhaps you've never grown before and you're not sure about it you just want to try it but you don't want to sew a whole crop container gardening is really easy you can grow just about any vegetable in a container there are many other advantages of container gardening let's say you have very bad soils sand maybe you live on a beach maybe you've got hard clay maybe you don't have any soil you live on a concrete lot you can you can garden in containers on top of that soil and uh yeah it's it's really easy to do it gives you some space to garden in and it's actually not hard this soil back here is really bad soil there's lots of wood chips on here lots of wood chips mixed in that's going to take a while to break down and beneath all this soil tons and tons of gigantic tree roots so i can't really garden in the soil but i can garden on top of it with containers and sort of containers other advantages of container gardening is that you can bring your plants indoors when inclement weather comes say you're going to have a frost or a freeze maybe you've got a hurricane blowing in like we sometimes do and you've got all these plants and containers if you've got room in the garage for example you can just wheel those things into the garage and keep your plants safe there all kinds of reasons to container garden so let's talk about it i've got a bunch of steps here that will help you successfully grow vegetables in pots and containers well the first and obvious element in container gardening is the container itself there are numerous kinds of containers you can grow in from five gallon buckets like this one to containers specifically made for potting and nurseries with holes in the bottom you can grow in recycled containers that you buy your plants in to keep these things and you can grow other kinds of plants in them grow bags like this one and i'm reusing this one i've already used it as you can see from the algae on it grow bags have advantages we'll talk about that in a minute you can even grow in things like bins from the from the store storage bins or recycled recycled bins those come in real handy i like those the containers are just anything that you can grow in you don't have to go to the store and buy fancy ceramic pots or you don't have to even buy these kind of plastic pots that are made for container gardening you can scrounge up whatever you need to hold soil but the key is with all of these containers you must have drainage holes you've got to have good drainage in the bottom whether it be holes like these on the side or whether you drill holes in the bottom of a five gallon bucket you must have drainage it's absolutely important and the reason for that is plants cannot have their roots sitting in water especially stagnant water they'll rot they'll get root rot they'll turn yellow and they'll die one year i had some bell peppers in a five gallon bucket and they weren't doing good i couldn't figure out why i figured out i didn't have any holes in that bucket and as soon as they drilled holes in a few days later they perked right up so any kind of container we'll do let's look at some other options small pots and containers like these these little ornamental planters can sometimes be good but you can see you get a lot of plants in there and they struggle to survive because that's just not a lot of soil but you can use them just make sure to drill holes in the bottom i really love terra cotta pots they're actually my favorite they're heavy and they're not as common anymore and even when they get old they still work when they crack and split i think they're quaint and i like them a lot you can see here i grow a lot of things in containers right here all of these things right here are mostly fig trees and citrus trees and they're all in different size containers according to the size of the plant and that's a key you have to match your plant to the size of the container and that takes a little bit of research when you buy a tomato plant at the store or an eggplant or some squash like those back there you got to know the size of the root ball generally the the size of the foliage and the plant that you want is going to be about the same size as the root system now you could cheat a little bit if you for because we fertilize containers so like tomatoes for example i've seen people try to grow tomatoes in little pots coffee can size pots and you're just not going to get results that way you want a larger pot you want something five gallons or larger for tomato for an eggplant for a squash for anything that's going to be a full-sized garden vegetable i've grown beans in five gallon pots pretty successfully something like herbs though let's say you just want to grow an herb garden like these down here you can get away with shallower pots with smaller pots because the the root systems just don't go down that deep and the plants don't get that big so you want to be able to choose the size of pot that your plant will be able to benefit from the most something like this gnarled old jalapeno pepper this is a three-year-old plant and it's been in that pot its entire life i have had to refresh that soil and top it off with new soil but that is just one of those five gallon pots and this pepper has done well i have had to prune it to keep it about that size because again that's the biggest size you want in a pot like that that's just going to take some experimentation and some research on your part to match the pot to the plant also when considering what kind of plant to put in your pots especially with regard to tomatoes i find that bush types that are determinants they're the best for a pot bush types like this dwarf even a dwarf determinant is an excellent tomato this tomato plant is not going to get any bigger than that and it's going to produce flowers it's going to produce fruit maybe once maybe twice because it's a determinant that means it grows up and it produces all its fruit at once or maybe twice then it dies it's done that's ideal for pot so if you go to the store and you're shopping for tomato plants for a potted container garden look for determinate varieties those generally do the best what you don't want is a gigantic cherry tomato plant that's an indeterminate that can grow to 15 feet tall that's not going to do well in a container the next thing we've got to consider when container gardening is the soil that we're going to grow in container gardening is its own discipline it's not like growing directly in the ground what we want for container garden gardening is potting mix you want to go and buy or make you can make your own but for the sake of ease let's just talk about buying bags you want it to say potting mix not garden mix not not top soil not compost not humus you want it to say potting mix it's designed for containers because what we want in here is something as loose something that's arable something that drains really well while at the same time retaining some moisture and the problem with containers is they're a small sample of soil they're not in the ground insulated with all the surrounding ground the root systems of your plant have to sit in this small this small sample of soil and well there's air flow all around there's heat from the sun all around and the moisture in this pot can wick away very quickly so that's what potting soil is designed to do to retain and hold on to some of that moisture for a longer time than let's say the ground in your raised bed or the ground in a regular garden so what you want to look for is potting mix potting mix is normally made up of some organic material like coco coir peat moss or some other kind of forestry product that is uh really good at soaking up and retaining moisture coca core and peat moss are the most common i like the peat moss but peat moss is an excellent base for a potting mix also in potting mix you'll find that there are there's compost mixed in and oftentimes almost all the time you'll find that there's perlite mixed in perlite is just an expanded volcanic rock it's the little white pellets you find in the potting soil and that serves to aerate the soil keep it loose keeping it from getting compacted and that's basically your basic potting mix if you're going to make your own and it's cheaper if you've got to fill up a whole bunch of these big pots i get you a bale of peat moss get you a large bag of perlite and get you a couple large bags of compost and add those together in one third and one third ratio one part to one part to one part and you'll have an excellent potting mix the next topic when it comes to containers is not just the soil but the fertility in the soil container plants deplete the soil very quickly that's because everything the plant needs is going to be just in here the plant doesn't have the opportunity to send its roots out and go foraging all through a garden looking for nutrition you have to put nutrition in and the potting mix while it has some nutrition in it doesn't have enough for the whole growing season for your plants to really thrive so what i like to do is amend my soil and there are numerous ways you can amend soil but the way i like to do it is to put in some granular organic slow release fertilizer i use this dr earth's that's the one i like it's all natural tomato vegetable and herb fertilizer it's an all-purpose fertilizer why i like this is it also contains in addition to the nitrogen potassium phosphorus that your plants need those macronutrients it also contains a whole lot of uh fungal life and bacterial life it inoculates the soil with things that the the soil really needs that you find in native soil but you don't really find in potting mix so i'll take some of this and i have some here i'll just take a handful of it and i'll sprinkle it in on the top let's do two handfuls because we're going to mix it in and over time this will break down slowly and and remain available to the plant for a good long time i also like to use worm castings worm castings are perhaps one of the best nutrients that your soil can have this is the the castings of earthworms and they're harvested and they're wonderful stuff so i like to put a couple of handfuls of that in as well and we'll mix this in real well some people add things like kelp meal azomite whatever it is but these are the two i like to put in as my initial slow release fertilizer and we'll just mix that in to the upper surface of the soil just mix it in about the first four or five inches or so and that will as the y as you water and as the rain falls on it slowly it will release those nutrients and your plants will have a a nice healthy time of it there's more though because your plants are in a small sample of soil and because the water is passing through this soil and percolating through it it's like a coffee filter when you make coffee the coffee essential oils and the the fluids that are in the bean are leached out the flavorings and it makes coffee and what you're left with is coffee grounds that have been depleted you can't make good coffee again with that coffee ground that's been depleted you have to throw it out it's the same thing with potting mix as these fertilizers get broken down and used up by the plant and as the water leaches out the parts that aren't used by the plant right then and there you're going to have to replace it and so what i like to do is use a liquid fertilizer every two weeks in addition to what's already in there and i like to use a low-dose fish emulsion a 5-1-1 when the plants are young and new and then once they start putting on blossoms i'll switch to a liquid fertilizer that has a larger middle number that's that potassium that phosphorus and that potassium you want those to be a little bit higher because those help support blooming and root health and kind of balances out the plant nitrogen is all about leafy green growth so if you're growing lettuce if you're growing things that you just want to get leafy greens from just stick with that fish emulsion stick with the nitrogen but you want to keep adding every two weeks a low dose of liquid fertilizer just replace one of your waterings with a liquid fertilizer and your plants will thank you you are responsible for what goes in here and you are responsible for feeding your plants they're like children you got to keep them fed or they turn yellow and die there's another question when container gardening should you start seeds or should you start with starts that you purchased at the store well either you can do either the beauty of container gardening is potting mix is almost ideal for starting most seeds especially larger seeds like these long beans this is a summer crop i can start some of these in a five gallon bucket i'd grow two or three seeds in here and then i would select just one plant for this bucket because these seeds vine far and wide and so they need a lot of nutrition they need a lot of soil if i was to start seeds for like basil i could put several basil plants in here so again match the match the size of the plant you intend to grow to the pot you're going to grow in but yes you can start directly but for this pot the pepper that i'm going to plant is a start in fact this is my single seed challenge for 2021 this is an ahi charapita chili pepper and it has struggled it has nearly died several times it made it through the giant freeze it should be a foot and a half tall by now but it's stunted i'm going to see if i can't by potting it up get this plant to be healthy so single seat challenge update there you go if you don't know about the single teeth challenge i'll put a link in the description there and you can go check it out anyone can participate anyone can play you can start anytime you can start over if you fail but yeah it's a fun way to watch one single seed i planted one seed in this container and there it is okay you've seen how we have amended the soil we've got slow release fertilizer in here i'm going to drop in my single seed challenge and we're going to grow a little pepper plant in here i want to be very careful with this guy because it's one chance on this guy see how the roots are not quite circling that's good by putting him in here by putting this plant in new soil fresh soil it should give him a little bit of a boost i call him him because he's special to me it's like a pet and you just want to gently press your plant down into that potting soil there we go now what i'll do is come back and water this in really well you always want to water in your plants because that's the whole point of container gardening is to retain moisture so i'm going to get the watering can we're going to put some water in this guy and he should be off and growing soon you can give a container plant a little bit more water than you think it needs because once again we have well-draining soil here this will help settle this soil down take away any air gaps that are down in there and it will encourage those roots to go deep so this plant's a little floppy but once he starts growing he'll straighten up and toughen up yeah i'm happy about that well since we're watering let's talk about watering once your plants are are in once your seeds are in you want to keep the soil evenly moist until your seedlings emerge that means you might have to water every single day if they're in full sun because the top layer of your soil will dry out even though there's moisture way down below if you're dealing with seedlings or seeds the roots are going to be in the top inch or two of the soil you want to keep that evenly moist as your plants get larger you can back off on the watering the plants will tell you if they need water what you want to do is put your finger down into the soil about two or three inches and see if there's moisture there if it feels damp if there's moisture down there you should be good but if it's dry that far down you want to water and the thing about watering containers is it needs to be done frequently because these containers like i said before evaporate a lot of moisture out of there simply because it's a small sample of soil and they're heated up by the sun because well they're not buried down insulated by the entire ground around them and so watering these things frequently is necessary the next topic i want to talk about with regard to container gardening is the use of mulch mulch is almost always a good idea especially in container gardens mulch adds a layer over the top of your soil that helps insulate the soil and reduce the evaporation of the moisture out of your soil it also helps suppress weeds and it helps a little bit in regulating the temperature so i have this rice hull mulch i get it at am leonard online everyone always asks me where do you get your rice home mulch i order bales of it from am leonard but i'm just going to put about an inch layer maybe two on top of this bare soil and this will help these plants and insulate the soil and help retain moisture there it also helps weed seeds from blowing in from outside and settling in on top here as well as suppressing the weeds that are already down in there you want a mulch that's not going to get dense and matted like grass clippings green grass clippings will mat up even dry grass clippings that are certain kinds of grass that have slightly composted they'll make a sheet that water can't penetrate this rice hull is easy for water to penetrate the other mulch i recommend is hardwood shredded hardwood mulch that's a great mulch it's one of my favorites it's just a little more expensive than these rice hulls but it's more readily available because you could go down to the home depot and get it lots of different kinds of mulch that's its own topic but this is what you should do put mulch on your containers as soon as you can as soon as the plants are tall enough where you're not going to cover them up put a good layer of mulch on there the next thing we want to consider is how to support your plants as they grow some plants really need support like these tomatoes here these are determinate tomatoes but that doesn't mean that just because they're bush types they don't need a tomato cage for example this will help support the branches as they start to fruit out and these are fruiting out and as this fruit gets heavy it's going to pull those branches down so you can just bring these branches over a tomato cage and that will hold them up pepper plants are notorious for flopping to the ground when they get loaded down with fruit so a tomato cage is helpful for a pepper sometimes a simple garden steak is all you need you just get the garden steak and some twine and you loosely tie up your pepper plants chief vine to a to a steak and you can use as many steaks as you want but in a container like this you're growing plants that are large support is always a good idea so there we have it a bunch of steps about how you can be successful in growing plants and pots one more i might add is to be on the patrol for pests as your plants start growing visit your plants often when you go out to water them that's a good time to also inspect them for pests you can grow almost any kind of vegetable any kind of food in a pot it's not rocket science you can do it just follow these easy steps and you will be growing your own food in containers thanks for joining me today on black gumbo southern gardening i know there are thousands of gardening channels that you can choose to watch there are some very good ones out there so i'm just very humbled that you chose to spend time in my garden with me please subscribe if you haven't like us on instagram and follow us on facebook and we'll talk to you next time happy gardening you

Channel: Scott Head

Views: 33,211

Rating: 4.9744058 out of 5

Keywords: Gardening, Vegetables, Texas Gardening, Zone 9a, Black Gumbo, How to grow vegetables in containers, container gardening, how to grow vegetables in pots, container gardening advice, container gardening tips, how to grow tomatoes in containers, how to grow squash in containers, how to grow peppers in containers, learn how to garden in containers, growing vegetables in containers, how to have success with container gardening, successful container gardening

Id: 1MOBOWqs_Fg

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021