12 Reasons Why I Grow Vegetables in Containers

Well good morning homestead family. I've had some subscribers reaching out to me in the comments asking me why in the world do you grow vegetables in containers when you have a five acre garden complex. You know what that's a pretty good question. I think that'll be the topic of the day's video. We'll be right back. Well welcome back friends. I just wanted to walk you through real quick the different size containers that I use here commonly on our homestead and I can grow pretty much anything I want in these various size containers. Just let me walk you through them real quick. This is my seed starting cup right here. This is what I start all my seeds in and after they get germinated and get up a couple two or three weeks old I will either step them up or plant them out directly into the garden. If I step it up I'll step it up into a four inch cup like this one here which I can put on a grow out table and let it grow for a while and once it gets a little bit bigger and a really robust root system I'll go ahead and plant it in containers or as or directly out into the earth bed itself. This is my six inch container. I use this on various vegetables that are you know going to be kind of small. Not going to be a very big plant and not going to have a very big root system. This is a common container here. It is called a one gallon container. I use this for several things stepping up plants as well as growing some vegetables in there for the life of the plant. For example lettuce. Here's a two gallon bucket and this one I use for some small vegetables or some large lettuce. For example my Salanova butterhead lettuce I like to grow in a two gallon container because you know the bouquet is about the size of the size of the container so it grows a perfect bouquet of that Salanova greenhead lettuce in there. This is a very common container three gallon is very versatile can be used for many many different plants and we'll go into a little bit more detail about that. Here is a five gallon bucket a common five and gallon bucket comes in handy for lots of good things to grow and easy to to grow in a five gallon bucket and they're readily available anywhere. This is my 15 gallon container I use it and some vegetables for example you know potatoes or something that's going to get pretty big you know that a big broccoli or something like that you could go up into a 15. You can grow a broccoli in a five just as well and sometimes I put them in here depending on how many I'm trying to grow and here is my 20 gallon container this is one that I use commonly for growing potatoes and buckets y'all seen those videos a dozen times but that's my 20 gallon container. So let me show you the most common ones that you're gonna that you can probably use in your garden for pretty much anything. The one gallon container is a very common use I can be used for lettuce and things like that radishes anything that's got a small root system that you could use a one gallon with really with no problem. This is your most versatile container in the garden this is a three a three gallon container. The other one the most popular one in the garden is the five gallon bucket. Now these three right here can grow a tremendous amount of vegetables as you know a vegetable root system is it you know on average about nine to twelve inches deep. So when you get ready to grow any kind of vegetable in your garden in the container you want to visualize the root ball and the root system on that container. If you think of a radish you've got the little radish bulb and a little taproot off of the bottom of the radish that's really only about five or six inches deep. This one gallon container could grow five or six little radishes in there. So you want to choose a container what I usually use as a rule of thumb is the size of the root ball and I want to double that with the container. So if the root ball is about six inches deep I want to you know about an eight or nine inch container deep container or even as much as twelve but no less than nine. So that right there is pretty versatile for a lot of small things lettuce especially. This three gallon container I can grow a lot of different things in here bok choy chimpsy greens all kinds of things will grow in a three gallon container easily and you'll see on our channel we have several videos showing us using these three gallons. Five gallon bucket is another beauty. You can see it's pretty deep so if you've got a 12 inch plant 12 inch root ball I really still have about twice the root ball. So this right here I can use for broccoli cauliflower peppers anything like that. This is great for little patio tomatoes and things like that. This is great for bigger plants you know when you get up into your brassicas and stuff like that or potatoes you know you can grow a little five gallon bucket full of potatoes if you like the small new potatoes that this is perfect for but these these are the containers and I just wanted to walk out here into the into the container garden itself and let's just take a look at some of the things we're growing out here and and maybe we can discuss some of the reasons why I grow in container instead of putting it out in the earth bed. Let's check it out. One of the various reasons I use containers to grow certain vegetables is I can use an elevated table such as this three gallon container table that I've built. This is a grow rack we have this video on our channel if you want to do this yourself at home they're very simple to build and if you have a a grow table for yourself to grow your your containers on it's easy on your back it's very senior citizen friendly and that is a good reason to try to consider using containers because you can elevate them up off the ground so you're not on your hands and knees when you're trying to maintain or harvest your plants. So an elevated table is another good reason that I use the containers it's because I can make it a little easier on my back in my older age. Another factor that I consider whenever I'm making a decision on if I'm going to grow it in the earth bed or if I'm going to grow it in containers is the type of plant that I'm growing what is it prone to with insect and disease activity. For example these are bok choy and I guess everybody knows that bok choy are absolutely slug magnets they draw back slugs on them terribly and I used to grow these in the ground and I would struggle with them things trying to use diatomaceous earth around them and just constantly fighting with the slugs and most of the time the slugs would win but when I built these tables and I started putting them in three gallon containers which is the perfect size for a bok choy and I elevated up on them off the ground my my slug problem disappeared so that is another thing to consider is what kind of insect activity are you suffering with if you're trying to grow it in the ground. Remember when you have things growing in the ground there's a lot more insect activity down on the ground where they can you know thrive as compared to up in the air like this so it does greatly reduce them some I'm not saying that you're not going to get away from flying insects and things like that but the stuff that dwells in the ground and crawl creepy crawly things that want to get in your in your vegetables and lifting them up off the table will greatly reduce that. Another reason I like to use containers on some vegetables is they are 99% weed free so the maintenance on taking care of your containers is almost zero so if you do once in a while you'll get a little straggler of a little weed pop up in there and you can just pick it out real quick like that and just throw it away and you're done yeah that's a lot easier than being on your hands and knees for several hours. Another common problem all of us gardeners have always faced no matter if you're living in a suburban setting or a rural setting like us is you're going to have yard bunnies if you have a garden. Yard bunnies are everywhere they can they can even survive and thrive in your yard in your shrubbery out in front of your house and you never even know they're there but the yard bunny will decimate your little garden if he gets going on it so another reason to have your plants elevated like this is a bunny will not climb so if you have it at least 24 inches up off the ground he's not going to mess with it so elevating your plants can greatly reduce damage from Mr. Rabbit. Another good candidate for containers is lettuce. Nancy and I have grown lettuce for years and for many years I grew lettuce out in in the ground in the earth bed and what happens is when it rains heavily or you irrigate what happens is you get some splash up from the soil from you know the rain hitting the ground and splashing the dirt and grit up into the lettuce and then when you harvest the lettuce it's a difficult job to get that thing thoroughly cleaned which means you have to rinse it multiple times soak it it's just a big job to have to do that you really don't have to there's nothing worse than biting into a beautiful lettuce salad and it'd be gritty you know so what we do is we grow all of our lettuce in a little six inch cups and it's a perfect size container for it because it's not a very deep rooted plant. I have it elevated off of the table off the ground on a grow table so it's away from the rabbits and it's away from the majority of the insect activity. People ask me what do you use on all your lettuce to keep everything off of it I don't use any pesticide or spray at all none all this lettuce grows just fine up off the ground on a grow table in a container so it's easy to maintain it I don't have to worry about weeds when I get ready to harvest it it's very simple to come out and harvest I don't I don't have to crawl around on my hands and knees and you can just pick what you want and go rinse it off a quick rinse and you know pretty much it's ready to go if this was grown in the ground it would be you know a lot of labor involved trying to get the grit out of it but this right here is the way to go with lettuce. Something else to consider when you're thinking about growing a container garden is how are you going to harvest and how much are you going to harvest and a lot of the cases when we're harvesting we just want to harvest enough for a meal for that night we don't want to come out here and get a whole bunch of vegetable high yield vegetable harvest and try to cook it the same day it's so convenient you know like we say well we want some lettuce for us for a salad and get some onions you know to throw in there and I need a few little onions for cooking and and maybe some potatoes to go with it and what Nancy can do or myself is we can come out here and we can harvest off a couple of these little six inch cups of lettuce and maybe grab up one of these one gallon containers of a bunch of onions and we harvest those and we go over and dump out a five gallon bucket of potatoes and we get you know two three pounds of little new potatoes that are small and very tasty and that way we can let things continue to grow out here and harvest it daily and when if it's easy to harvest and easy to come and get you don't have to get all hot and sweaty you're not crawling around on your hands and knees it's all on elevated tables I can get one two three four ingredients and run in or Nancy and cook it that night for supper oh baby ain't nothing more tasty than something that's been grown and harvested and cooked the same day and it's a good way to stretch out your your yield you can harvest these every day or every couple of days and that'll last for several weeks if I was growing this in the ground it'd be harder to do and I'd end up going out and and harvesting a whole bunch of it at one time and trying to keep it in the refrigerator it's just not easy to do so that's another reason that you might want to consider when you're thinking about a container garden is can I just harvest a little bit at a time and go along and stretch it out here's an example of a vegetable that grows just as good in a five gallon bucket as it does out in the earth bed we've grown it both ways so this is a nap of cabbage Nancy likes this when she makes her Korean kimchi and the woman loves her kimchi so I've grown this in the vegetable garden earth bed before it gets just as pretty and beautiful heads but it's very difficult to get the grit out of it and get it clean and it's usually got a lot of insect activity associated with it and a lot of the leaves lay and touch the earth the ground which causes them to start developing disease problems and rot and it's a little bit more difficult to grow but when I put them in a five gallon bucket the root ball will eventually pretty much fill up that five gallon bucket by the time it's ready to harvest but the beautiful thing about it is it's totally clean very little rinsing has to be done so when we she comes out and harvests this she cuts that head of that cabbage out of there it's a quick rinse really it's not a really burdensome job to do it's easy to get to it's in the buckets and we got them on these these five gallon bucket racks container grow tables here we do have um a video on our channel on how to build these these container racks for your five gallon buckets if you want to do one for yourself so check that video out but these racks hold the buckets well they when they're not susceptible to being turned over into wind they're elevated up off the ground a little bit which makes harvesting easy as well as weed control and watering but the main reason that we elected to go with this is the the ease of cleaning this and getting it ready for her to use in her kimchi because that kimchi it really needs to be perfectly clean to be just right you know so having it in this bucket eliminates 99.9% of that grit that gets in there so when that thing's harvested it's ready to go just about so that's another reason to consider something else to consider when you're growing plants in a container is the amount of fertilizer that you're going to be needing in this case these are some asian spinach it's called kachempsi we've we've grown this before in the ground as well as in the containers and i found it much easier to do in the containers and you know for all the reasons we've already discussed but also with the fertilizing when i add the bone meal or the blood meal in in the pot it's contained in a tight confined area instead of having to try to go and apply fertilizer for a long row i can just it's much less and more economical to put just a little bit of fertilizer right where i need it in the container with the plant i don't lose that that fertilizer and that plant usually can go the entire life cycle of that plant on my initial fertilizing when i plant it so that's another good reason to consider when you're choosing what plants you want to plant in containers another great benefit is you can move containers around to suit weather conditions we grew these this fall and we've had two hurricanes come through just since i've started these plants so when they were in the seed starters trays we had to move them all inside that was the first hurricane that came by the second hurricane came by i had just stepped them up into these little two gallon little buckets here and we had to take them all and put them back in the shop and they had to stay in there for three days until you know hurricane nicole came by and we got that one out of here so we just got them back out on the grow table and you know no damage everything's 100 and that was uh due to being able to move them around another thing is is when i'm starting my fall vegetables um the time of the year down here in florida when i have to start my seeds it's pretty hot and by the time those seeds get ready to be transplanted out into the garden it could still linger i could the temperatures are coming down pretty good but you know you could bump right back up into the 90s for three or four or five days and that's not uncommon so having something that's delicate like this i can have it um you know that's real sensitive to heat such as spinach i have them in the containers and i can get them out here in the mornings and i can water them and if i see some hot days coming i move these over to an area that's more shady i've got some shady areas over here i can put them under the salad bar under the 40 shade cloth i can move these around to suit weather conditions so that's a great benefit of having some plants and containers is you can roll with the punches something else to consider about container garden is when you go to water your plants it's very easy to control the amount of water that you're giving it and where you're directing that water as you can see right here i'm just going right around the edge of the and i'm not hitting the leaves at all and i can tell how much water i'm getting in there and i can easily come out each morning i stick my hand in here and i feel how wet and moist that soil is and i can tell if i need to add a little more or a little less so being able to control the water in these containers is vital it's a good reason to be thinking about when you're doing container gardening well i hope our little video today answered a couple of questions for you about why i use containers when i have five acres to work with i'm still putting things in small pots and growing them it's it's got some benefits and i think that that might be something you may want to consider and there's something else to consider a lot of folks just simply don't have a yard you know they want to they want to grow a garden and they they live in a small duplex or something and all they have really is a patio or some some folks that are watch our channel they live in an apartment and all they have is a patio and they're able to grow things and containers on their patio or their balcony and enjoy some gardening living it you know without a yard so that's something to keep in mind as container gardening is very versatile it gives everybody a chance to grow something and i think it's just a good way to add a little something extra to your gardening experience if you're not already doing so so i hope that our our video today helped some of you folks and maybe even brought a smile to your face and some peace to your day so until me and nancy see y'all next time in the garden always remember by his hands we are fed give us lord our daily bread amen have a blessed day