5 Vegetables That Grow BETTER In Pots Than In Ground!

Do you want to grow lots of food, but maybe you don't have a big backyard, or you rent, or you just don't have the time and money to build and manage an entire vegetable garden? Well, you don't need a big backyard garden to grow a lot of food. All you need are a few containers and a little bit of knowledge. And on today's video, I'm going to share with you all five vegetables that grow better in containers than in an in-ground garden. Literally anybody can grow these crops practically anywhere. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. Crop number one that grows better in containers than in an in-ground garden is potatoes. In fact, if I could only grow one of my crops in containers, potatoes would probably be it, because I think growing them in fabric grow bags or large containers have big advantages to growing potatoes in ground. For example, I really don't like growing potatoes in my in-ground garden because it's really hard to harvest potatoes in an in-ground bed, because you have to dig them up and you have to disturb the soil. And I don't like to dig up and heavily disturb or till my soil. And that is exactly what you do when you actually have to harvest your potatoes. You cause a tremendous amount of damage to the soil microbiome in your raised garden beds or your earth garden beds. Also, you invariably wind up missing a bunch of potatoes in the harvest. You're never going to get all of that potato material, and that's going to keep sprouting for you season after season. So if you like to rotate your crops, you're usually going to have potatoes coming up everywhere if you keep planting them successively all around your garden. And potatoes are also part of the nightshade family, similar to peppers and tomatoes and eggplant, and they are highly susceptible to disease. You can see diseases all over this potato plant. So I don't like putting potatoes in my earth bed garden or my raised bed garden. I like to isolate them in grow bags where the diseases won't spread to other crops in my garden. Potatoes like cool but frost-free weather. So I grow my potatoes in the shoulder season here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. I plant my first wave of potatoes, which is my main planting, in March, about two to three weeks before my last frost of the year. That way, by the time the potatoes sprout and the greenery breaks through the surface, usually the last chance of frost has passed. And then I'll harvest it when it's still relatively cool, usually in early June, before the real heat, humidity, and rainfall comes. Then I'll take them and I'll store them in my garage where they will keep for several months. Then some of the old potatoes, after they sprout over the course of the hot summer, I'll take them and I'll replant them come at some point in late July, early August. And then I will be able to harvest a smaller fall crop, usually in late October, early November, before the frost and freeze starts here in North Carolina Zone 8. You know your potato plants are ready for harvest when they naturally die back. Honestly, I should have harvested these probably about two weeks ago, but I was on vacation. So I'm going to harvest them now. All I'm going to do is I'm going to drag this 20-gallon fabric grow bag and dump them out on a tarp. Then I'm going to sort through them. I'm going to find the potatoes in there. And then I'm going to isolate the potatoes to the side, move them into my garage where they will cure for a couple of weeks. And then I'll store them throughout the winter. Once I'm done harvesting the potatoes, I'll then take that soil and add it all back to that grow bag. And I'll use it to grow something different in that isn't directly related to the potato in spring. That's kind of like crop rotation. And that's why I love growing potatoes in containers so much. Instead of rooting around your garden beds for an hour and tearing up your soil, you just dump the bag and you find all your potatoes in five minutes, and then you fill the bag back up. And if you're curious, my favorite size and container type to grow potatoes in, I like 20 or 25-gallon grow bags. Now, I don't have a massive harvest here, but keep in mind I did absolutely nothing to get these potatoes after I planted them, other than set up drip irrigation and initial fertilizing. So I wasn't going after a really big crop. This is basically 10-plus pounds of practically free potatoes. So if you want to know the finer details as to how to grow a bigger potato harvest like I grow in the spring, I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will show you pretty much everything you need to know to have a really big harvest. Crop number two that grows better in a container garden are sweet potatoes. And you may be surprised to learn that sweet potatoes are not directly related to potatoes. Potatoes are part of the nightshade family. They are closely related to tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. Sweet potatoes are actually part of the morning glory family, and what you're actually getting is a morning glory root. Whereas regular potatoes are very susceptible to diseases and prefer cooler weather, your sweet potatoes are distinctly tropical. They love very sandy soil, high humidity, high rainfall rates. These are one of the easiest things that you can grow in the southeast. They thrive in conditions that beat up a lot of the nightshades here. However, there is something that you should know about growing sweet potatoes, and that is they are very invasive. Now in order to have a really nice sweet potato harvest, you really need long warm summers. They need a nice warm period. And if you're like me in zone 8 or warmer, maybe even in zone 7, one of the problems that we have is that the soil doesn't freeze very deeply here. So in areas that you grow sweet potatoes, they tend to become very invasive over time because any leftover bits of root matter will start to sprout. For a few years I grew my sweet potatoes in this bed right here, and I stopped because the vines were invading my entire garden, and I could barely walk around this entire third of my garden with the sweet potatoes growing in. So when I stopped growing the potatoes in this bed, they kept coming back for years. I was pulling vines and sweet potatoes out of this bed for three years after I stopped growing the sweet potatoes in there. If you grow your sweet potatoes in ground and you rotate them around your garden, eventually you're going to have sweet potatoes coming up forever everywhere. So please keep that in mind. That's one of the big reasons why I love growing sweet potatoes in containers, because I can isolate them and I won't have them coming up all over my garden, invading my property for years. But there's another advantage to container grown sweet potatoes, and that is sweet potatoes don't like soil with a lot of organic matter. They like growing in really junky southern sandy pine forest, covered in pine straw, low organic matter soil. If you give your sweet potatoes a lot of fertilizer and a lot of compost and a lot of mulch and other organic matter, you will have big beautiful green lush vines, but you'll get poor root development. I have found it much better to grow sweet potatoes in low organic potting mix. And years ago, I showed you how I make mine. I add a major sand component and I keep the compost and the amount of fertilizer I put in fairly low. And that has given me really large root development. So for that reason, I have found that growing sweet potatoes in containers is way more advantageous because they're far less invasive and I get bigger roots because I can control the mix. And I built this little trellis right here to house the vines. That way I keep them spreading around my entire garden. I can keep them isolated over here so they're less invasive. So if you're like me and you have hot, humid, wet summers and you struggle with fungal diseases and insect pests, sweet potatoes is one of the top things you should grow because they just don't have a lot of issues with insect pests and diseases. When it comes to growing them in containers, I recommend 20 or 25 gallon fabric grow bags. These are 25s. I think they're the perfect size. And I recommend once again, you grow them in containers because that way you can control that mix, keep it lower in organic matter to get bigger results and isolate them around from the rest of your garden. So they're not so invasive. And once again, I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description that shows you how to make this mix and how I like to grow sweet potatoes in containers for maximum results. Crop number three that grows better in containers than in raised garden beds or directly in ground are carrots. For some reason, nobody talks about growing carrots in containers and I don't understand why. Because growing them in containers cures the number one problem most of us have when it comes to growing carrots. And that problem is getting nice, straight, smooth carrots. And that's because carrots are very sensitive to soil type. If you have a heavy clay soil or you have very rocky soil and you grow carrots directly in that, you are probably going to get carrots that are deformed or kinked or just overall unattractive and not very good looking with a poor texture. In order to grow carrots very well, you have to have light, loamy, loose, well-draining soil with a very, very low to no rock content so those carrots can grow deeply and straight in very smooth, loamy soil. Now, if you have a deep raised garden bed like this, you can go ahead and grow your carrots in the deep raised garden beds. Over the last year, I've built a number of very deep raised garden beds like this and I'm growing carrots in them and I expect them to all come out looking perfect. But my original raised garden beds that I built over seven years ago only have seven inches of soil in them. So I had to limit myself to carrot varieties that only grew to be five to six inches. If I went with a long carrot, once the carrot root dug down into the native soil, it would hit that harder soil and it would start kinking where those two different layers of soil met. So if you have shallow raised garden beds like I used to have, well, carrots can be very difficult to grow. So if you grow your garden in ground and your native soil type is too heavy or rocky to grow carrots or you grow in raised beds and you don't have the money to build up your raised garden beds very tall, a cheap and simple solution is to grow your carrots in containers. For example, these 20-gallon grow bags right here are perfect for growing carrots and they are 14 inches deep. So I can easily fill that up with any kind of big box store raised garden bed mix or potting mix, fill that up 12 to 13 inches and I have the perfect container to grow carrots in and there won't be any rocks, there won't be any heavy clay, it'll be a nice, light, loamy, well-draining soil where the carrots will be able to grow as straight as possible. I planted these carrots in this 20-gallon grow bag five or six weeks ago and they are coming along beautifully. They're forming nice big green lush tops. However, carrots tend to take a little while to grow this time of year now that we're moving in the middle of fall because the temperatures get cooler and the days get shorter. So I expect these to take probably another 30 to 40 days before the roots get large enough that they're going to give me a nice big harvest. However, you simply must grow carrots in the winter because their sugar content is inversely proportional to temperature. If your carrots mature in the summertime when it's really warm out, they will have a high starch content. So if you've only ever grown spring carrots, you've never truly tasted a delicious carrot. When you grow them in late summer, early fall and then they mature in late fall, early winter, you get the sweetest, most delicious carrots possible. And I'm going to pick one just for demonstration, but keep in mind these are not going to be ready for at least another month or so. Let's pull one of these out. So these carrots when they're mature will be like seven to eight inches and this one right here is like, that's like six inches. So obviously we got a little ways to go with this guy, but in another 30 days, I think we're going to see big things in its future. And just because it's small doesn't mean it's not delicious. Let's give this a taste test. Oh, that is unbelievable. That is honey sweet, sugar sweet. If you have never grown yourself a winter carrot before, please, I urge you to do so. They are just incredible. If you think you don't have deep enough raised beds or the right native soil type to grow carrots, well, grow them in containers. They are a fantastic container crop. Crop number four that grows better in containers than in ground are peppers. I lived for 13 years in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs. And in that 13 years, I never once had a real backyard. I either had no backyard at all, or I had things like a roof deck or a parking lot. And despite that challenge, I always grew peppers. I grew them in long troughs. I grew them indoors. I grew them in five gallon Home Depot buckets. Whatever I could get my hands on. And they're probably one of the best fruiting annual vegetables that we can possibly grow in a pot. Sure, peppers grow great in raised garden beds. And if you have lots of raised garden beds and you have the room, by all means, grow them like I do in a raised garden bed. But if you have limited space or you don't have raised garden beds at all, well, peppers are one of the first things that you should pull out and put in pots because they do so much better in containers than most of the annual crops that we grow in our vegetable gardens. In fact, peppers aren't annual crops, don't you know? Peppers are actually perennials. They're just sensitive to frost and freeze. So here in the United States, we grow them as annuals because invariably they're going to get wiped out when it gets cold in the winter. But if you choose to grow them in containers, you can pick up the container and overwinter it. You can bring it indoors, cut it back, set it near a sunny windowsill or give it a grow light or put it out on your sunroom if you have one, like I'm lucky enough to have one and you can keep it above freezing and it will keep growing. Just a few weeks ago, I showed you pepper plants that I had been overwintering for six years. If you care for that plant, you keep the soil full of fertilizer, you give the plant adequate warmth, adequate light, you prune it back every year, you can treat it sort of like a fruit tree and you can grow it for years and years. In fact, in that video I showed you, this was the pepper plant that I dug up from the ground. It's still looking really good. It's starting to put on a few flowers and I'll more than likely be moving this to my sunroom in a week when we get our first frost and I should be able to grow this for several years. So if you don't have the space in your raised garden beds or you just don't have a backyard at all or all you have is a patio or a balcony or you live in an apartment, one of the first things that you should try growing is peppers in containers. They will fruit profusely. They're one of my favorite and easiest things to grow. When it comes to container size for peppers, I generally recommend either a five or seven gallon grow bag or hard nursery container. Another great alternative is a five gallon Lowe's or Home Depot bucket. They will be the ideal size. You may be able to go a little bit smaller all the way down to a three gallon container but keep in mind if you go that small, once you get into the heat of the summer and the pepper plants get pretty big, you probably will run into issues with watering. You may have to water them twice a day. So for watering purposes, you generally want to go with the largest containers that you can handle. That way they'll stay moist for at least a day or two. And while most varieties of pepper plants only grow to be a few feet tall, keep in mind there are some freaks of nature like this chocolate Trinidad scorpion pepper. These things can grow to be seven to eight feet tall and they will load up with insane amounts of fruits and foliage. This thing is massive. This is one plant right here. So keep in mind a number three container may not be appropriate for a beast such as this. So if you give them too small of a container, they will still fruit and they'll often fruit profusely but it will constrict the size a little bit. So consider that when selecting your container size. And crop number five that grows better in containers than in ground is lettuce, particularly large heading lettuce like your romaine types and it may not be for the reason that you think. Romaine lettuce is my favorite type of lettuce and as you can see, I have a gorgeous crop of this giant Caesar romaine right here and I've been harvesting it and it has been so good but there's a big problem when it comes to growing romaine and that is it is very sensitive to frost and freeze relative to most varieties of lettuce. I can grow your leaf lettuces here all winter long in North Carolina with just a little agricultural fabric over it but frost and freeze actually damages a lot of your large headed green romaines and we have frost and freeze coming next week. I'm going to have to cover all of this romaine lettuce or else the frost and the freeze is going to damage them. So for that reason, it's challenging for many of us to grow romaine because it's a shoulder season crop. It likes temperatures in the 60s and the 70s into the low 80s but it doesn't like the heat and it doesn't like the frost and freeze. So many of us, we have those truncated shoulder seasons so it's difficult to grow. So you can grow all of this beautiful romaine and have this massive harvest but you'll often find yourself having to eat it a lot faster than what you want because the harvest window is just so narrow because you have to thread that needle between heat and cold. The solution to this temperature problem is to grow romaine in containers and that is exactly what I am going to do. You see in a matter of a few weeks, it's going to be too cold out in the open in my large garden to grow romaine. It's just not a winter crop here but if I grow them in 20 or 25 gallon grow bags, I can play games with microclimates and I can actually grow romaine here all year long or at least all winter long. This little alcove behind me is a protected microclimate. Generally speaking, it will frost in my yard on a calm, clear night if temperatures drop below 34 degrees Fahrenheit but in order to get frost in this corner, usually temperatures have to drop to around 25 or 26 degrees Fahrenheit because I have a huge advantage with the microclimate of my house. This is the southern wall of my house right here so it's sitting, beating in the sun for seven, eight hours a day, even during the winter and I can feel the heat radiating off of this brick face right here and I also have the rain gutters and the soffit above me that provides a frost shield, a protective cover. So if I take 20 or 25 gallon grow bags and I pull them into the corner here where I have my frost-sensitive citrus growing in containers, well, usually they won't get any frost on them at all unless it drops below 26 or so degrees Fahrenheit. So things that can't grow out in the open in my garden without getting zapped by frost or freeze can grow in that protective microclimate in a large container. So in my office right now, I have more giant Caesar Romaine that is just starting to germinate and the goal is that I will grow them in a 20 gallon grow bag in that protected microclimate, that alcove in my home that I just showed you. So by the time those transplants are ready to go outside, it'll be a lot colder. I'll have eaten my way through the harvest inside my garden. I'll eat all of those heads of lettuce and give away any extras to family and neighbors and then I'll be able to start the next crop up against my house. So the Romaine lettuce that won't be able to survive out in the open in my garden will thrive in that protected corner. These microclimate tricks are great techniques for people that are in cold zones that generally can't garden throughout the winter. For example, I can usually pick up an entire hardiness zones worth of warmth up against the south wall of my house in that protected alcove. So my zone 8B climate becomes a zone 9B climate. So if you live in a zone 6 and it's really difficult if not impossible for you to grow cool crops out in the open unprotected, you can probably set up some grow bags in a protected alcove up against the south wall of your house and you can work your way up to a zone 7 with that protection. And by the way, if you live in the southern hemisphere, those warm walls are reversed. Your warm wall will be the northern exposure. That is where the sun will track all day. In fact, let's pick some of this romaine for dinner right here. Ain't she a beaut ladies and gentlemen, that is a good looking head of romaine and you can grow this too for a lot longer in the winter time than you think. And that right there are legitimately five crops that for most of us are going to be easier to grow in containers than in ground. I do have the space in my raised bed garden to grow all of these things in ground, but I still choose the majority of the time to grow them in containers because I genuinely believe that it is easier and there are a lot of advantages to be had growing them in containers. So if you don't have a big backyard garden, or maybe you rent and you can't build a backyard garden, or maybe you don't have a backyard at all, you can still grow all of these things with incredible success in containers. And I hope that this video has given you the motivation and the inspiration to do so. So everybody, I sure hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. For any of the products that I featured in this video and everything I use for container gardening, I'll place direct links to all of my favorite items down in the video description, like grow bags, hard nursery containers, fertilizers, and other tools. For everything else I use in real life in my yard and garden, that is all linked in my Amazon storefront. So expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, and you'll see everything I use in real life. And while you're there, please check out my website, themillennialgardener.com for custom homemade design merch and all things gardening related if you'd like to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Oh boy, we got some good food for Dale. We got chicken livers, chicken gizzards. We have some broccoli, some carrots. Dale, you're so funny. By the way, you're just sitting there patiently impatient, about to explode off the couch at any given moment. We're gonna set his bowl down. Okay. Dale, it's not going anywhere. It's not gonna run away. Oh, he's so good. He's so good. He waits patiently and patiently. I think he likes his Hungry's. I'm gonna leave him alone.