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

What's going on growers? It's James Frigioni coming to you live from Jersey. Today I'm going to show you how to grow a container garden for cheap that will produce more food than you can even imagine. Plus, I'm going to share with you some of my own secrets that you definitely don't want to miss. Let's go! I have been growing food in containers for years. We're talking beautiful peppers, huge orange ones that taste as good as they look, tomatoes that are just loaded with fruit, potatoes in buckets and even in boxes that kick out so much food, bush beans which are one of the best fresh snacks right from the garden, and even watermelons with perfect shape and unbeatable flavor. The point I'm trying to make is you don't need a lot of space to grow a lot of food. Heck, you don't need a garden area at all. If you can fit a few five gallon buckets, you'll have enough room to grow some of your fresh homegrown food and grab it right off the plant. What you really need is the right information and a few valuable tips that will make the whole thing work. And believe it or not, there are some major advantages to growing in containers compared to in the ground or even in a raised bed. We'll get into those as the video progresses. The first thing we need for a container garden is obvious, a container. And what you use isn't super important as long as you get a few things right. I have grown in five gallon buckets. They work great, are easily accessible and feel like the perfect size to me. I have grown in free recycled totes which are fantastic and give you more space allowing for more of a raised bed kind of feel. I have even grown in cardboard boxes which work well for crops like potatoes and even for some quick producing spring veggies like lettuce. Whatever container you decide to use though, what really matters is that you have drainage holes at the bottom. Without them, water will pool up and your soil will go anaerobic which means without oxygen. The leaves of our plants, they need carbon dioxide, but the roots need oxygen. If they're sitting in soil that doesn't have oxygen in it, then they will get root rot that could potentially kill your plant and that will just be horrible. So the first and foremost thing is that we need to make sure we have proper drainage. For five gallon buckets and for my totes, I drill my own holes with a half inch drill bit. It's quick and easy to do. If you buy containers that are specific for gardening or use grow bags, they'll have drainage already drilled in most of the time. Even though this one does, but you just have to poke it through. So you don't have to worry about that. One reason I choose five gallon buckets, especially if you have to buy them from like Lowe's, is because they're cheaper. So the cost of all three of these containers is the same. You can see the clay one is going to be the smallest for the same price. So the same cost, but different sizes. You get the most space out of this five gallon bucket. I've also had some people mention in the past to me that they went to like a health food store and were able to get food safe containers for only a dollar or you could even go to like a bakery or something and try to get containers on the cheap. I just love the five gallon buckets. They've worked so well for me in the past. If you want to use recycled containers, you want to make sure that they're food safe. For the five gallon buckets, it's best if you have a stamp on the side like this one here. It says food grade on it, so we know we're good. When it comes to some of the other containers like this tote here, if you flip it over on the bottom of it, it'll have a stamp. It'll tell you what kind of plastic it is. There are about seven different kinds of plastics. You want to make sure that yours has either a two, four, or five. Those are food grade ones. One is food grade also, but it's more for single use. So if possible, I would probably avoid that one. This number just tells you what the plastic is, you know, what kind of plastic it is. It doesn't tell you what was in the container before. So make sure if you use a plastic container, even if it is food grade, that there wasn't some other chemicals in it before actually using it. I have a valuable tip for you about watering that will keep your plants better hydrated and also save fertilizer. But before we get to that, we need to get to the next critical phase of container gardening, soil. First off, you never want to use native soil in your containers. It will be way too dense. I know it's enticing because it's right there and it's free, but I'm telling you it won't work. I've tried it. I suggest you start with a good potting mix or make your own soil. And today, I'll show you a quick, easy way to make a fantastic soil mix. If you go with bagged soil, make sure you get a potting mix. This isn't the one that I use, but make sure you get a potting mix, not a raised bed soil or an in-ground soil. My favorite potting mix is the Happy Frog Soil right here. I've used it for many years and it's always done really well for me. I have also used the Performance Organics potting mix. That works well too. But in my opinion, what really matters is the structure of the potting mix because we can add some of our own fertilizer in. We're going to have to do that later anyways, as the plant starts to grow, but you cannot change the structure of the soil once you get things growing. So that's really the important thing we're focused on right now. A major advantage to growing in containers is you won't have to deal with soil-borne diseases as long as you get a good quality potting mix or you make the soil yourself. And the soil-borne diseases are terrible, especially for plants like tomatoes. They'll just decimate them. Diseases like fusarium wilt, where there's not really anything you could basically do about it. There's like no sprays. Also, you'll avoid some bugs that are naturally in the ground. I know for me here personally, there's a nasty bug. It's called a Garden Symphylon in my natural soil and it eats the roots of the plants. There's not too much I could do about it. There's not like a spray or anything I can necessarily do. But grow in a container and make your own soil. We can avoid all those issues. Let me show you a mix that works amazing. I've been using it for years and it just has given me incredible results. And a lot of you viewers have also said that you've tried this mix before and it's worked fantastic for you as well. So let's get into it. What it consists of is three parts coco coir. And what I like to call the mix before I get too detailed is the 3-2-1. You'll see why. But it's three parts coco coir. You can use either coco coir or peat moss. I like coco coir better though because it's more environmentally friendly. It can dry out a little quicker than maybe something like peat moss but then it's also much easier to rehydrate after it dries out. This stuff works great. I really love it. The other option you could use is the peat moss. This one isn't as environmentally friendly but it's cheaper and more accessible. It's also a little bit acidic so I definitely prefer to use the coco coir but you could use peat moss as your base if you want. So three parts coco coir. Next we're going to move to compost. So three for the coco coir, two for the compost. And I use these five gallon buckets because it makes it really easy to get your ratios right and measure everything perfectly. So two parts compost. This compost right here is a mushroom compost that I get locally. It works pretty well. You could also just use something like this. This is a different one, a cow manure compost that I get locally too. This one's pretty good. If you want to buy bagged composts, I've tried a few of them. The black cow, this one, I know people talk good about it but overall I don't think it's that fantastic. I actually prefer this one over here. This is the timberline compost. Look at the how it looks. It's I think a better quality one. So again, two parts compost. And then as we move back here, the other one part of the 3-2-1 mix is going to be perlite. So you can do one part perlite but for a more advanced mix what I like to do is half perlite, half vermiculite. The vermiculite is going to make it so the soil is light but this retains water. The perlite is for drainage. So if we combine both of them, it makes our mix lighter but it still gives us good water retention. So what we're going to do is take our 3-2-1 and start mixing and I'll show you the structure and then we'll move on to the next step. Let's get to mixing. You can see our ratios here. Three parts cocoa, one part as we combine these. This is vermiculite and perlite. So it'll be one part of the vermiculite perlite and then two parts compost. I'm going to mix it on this tarp. It just makes it a lot easier to do. You'll see as we get mixing. Let's start with the cocoa coir. Do one bucket, spread it out, two buckets and then our third. Then I'm going to put in our vermiculite and our perlite so I can cover it with the compost. Get that in and we'll get our compost. I'm going to use the mushroom compost because I've used it for years. It works great just like this. Next I'll grab my rake and in true recycled fashion we got a recycled rake. Look at this thing. Someone was getting rid of it. Got it absolutely destroyed but it still works good for mixing. So we'll mix all this together just lightly with a rake. Then I'm going to start grabbing the corners of the tarp and mix it like that. So I'll just take a corner of the tarp like this and roll the whole thing over. It's an easy way to get the mix going. A lot of you have said in the past that I should get just a cement mixer but I don't mind mixing it like this by hand. I think it's kind of fun. Rotate on the tarp again. This really doesn't take long. It takes about, I usually do like two tarp rotations like this and then I'll get in there and mix by hand. So that's good like that. Now I'll get in here and the way I like to do it best is just get in there and just mix by hand like this to really get everything looking good mixed together. We can get as evenly dispersed as possible. You're already starting to see. Look at that. Look how beautiful that is. Perfect balance. Nice ratios. This is going to grow some amazing food. The basic mix is finished. The structure is perfect. Look at that. This is exactly what we want. This is where our plants are going to be living so this is a super important part of the whole growing process especially when we're growing in containers. I'm telling you just try this mix out one time. I promise you you will not be disappointed. The one thing it's lacking is some nutrition so we're going to add some fertilizer in just a minute. Let's get our five gallon bucket filled with our fresh made soil. Just going to fill it up like this nice and easy. One thing that's a good idea though is when filling your bucket it's best to fill it in the spot where you're going to actually be growing things. I'm not doing that right now but that's definitely the best idea because when we water this in after we get some stuff planted it's going to get pretty dang heavy so you're not going to want to move it. If you don't have to it's better to just fill your bucket in the spot you're going to plant. So when it comes to filling it what we're going to do is we're going to fill it about to a height say like around here. We don't want to fill it too deep or too high up because what's going to happen is in the future we're going to want to add some top dressing and fertilizer and some mulch so we don't want to like overflow the bucket that's not ideal. But this height is good because when we water it after we transplant it is going to sink down just a little bit so this is a great height here. One thing to note though our soil is already saturated. If you have a potting mix and it's super dry like this one here you come in so this potting mix is super dry we wouldn't want to transplant and then water we'd want to wet this down to get it to a saturation level something close to this where it's nice and moist. Then when we water it'll all be nice and saturated and moist. If you plant in here and then water there might be some dry pockets when transplanting and that will not be helpful for the plant so it's good to wet your potting mix down before you actually start planting into it. Another major advantage to growing in containers is you'll free up spot in your raised beds for crops that have more of a short season. For example when it comes to eggplants and peppers I highly prefer to plant them in containers as opposed to my raised beds because what happens is those crops they take so long to produce and by the time that the eggplant and the peppers are like ripening their fruit it's basically time for me to start preparing the fall garden or even the winter garden and they're just kind of in the way when they're in the raised beds. So what I like to do is grow them in containers instead even when it comes to tomatoes it works good too. You'll avoid so many of the soil borne diseases and they're just not in the way when you're transitioning. Not to mention when it comes to peppers we could overwinter our peppers because they're perennials so what we do is we take our containers our five gallon buckets we bring them into the greenhouse they stay in there all winter and kind of go into dormant mode then come spring I can pull them out of the greenhouse and I already have established pepper plants growing so there's just a host of advantages to growing in containers. Before we transplant into our pot with our new soil mix here we need to add some fertilizer and before I even do that actually I'm going to take out some of the soil because I'm going to be planting a tomato in this pot and a little tip for tomatoes is they'll root from the stems so what I'm going to do is take a little more soil out than I would normally have so I could plant a tomato and then in the future I could add some more soil and it'll root from the stem so about here looks good lower than before. Next we're going to add some fertilizer. I highly suggest that you use an all-purpose fertilizer so you get a good balanced level of nutrition and the reason we have to add a fertilizer goes back to what I talked about earlier we built this soil for the structure the compost I added was a mushroom compost so it doesn't have a lot of nutrition in it we need to make sure that we're adding some nutrition. If you're using a bag soil then you won't have to worry about fertilizing at the start but you will in the future but we'll get into that later when you do some top dressing. So we're going to take some of our fertilizer our all-purpose one we're going to take about a half a cup maybe a little less so we'll say about there a little less than half a cup you can probably hear the ice cream man in the back we have a really nice day today it's like 90 degrees so we'll take some fertilizer like this maybe about a third a cup like that then we're going to mix it into the top few inches of the soil we don't have to mix it all the way down into the bucket because every time we water and every time it rains this fertilizer will go down to our soil deeper into the bucket so we're just going to mix it just like that beautiful and then we'll move to actually getting transplanted. I highly suggest using organic fertilizer you can get whatever one you want but if it's organic you'll have a way less chance of actually burning your plants as long as you don't go crazy and add like a insane amount. Also you can use a liquid fertilizer this one's one of my favorite during the growth stage the fish fertilizer the Alaskan one it works really well the problem is that it's a little high in nitrogen so we only want to use this during the growth stage we don't really want to use this when the plants start fruiting or it might just uh you know have them focus more on growth rather than on fruiting. Another thing is this fish fertilizer smells horrendous it's terrible you don't want to use it for any plants inside I mean it works well but it smells incredibly bad there's other fertilizers out there that are liquid that don't smell as bad but I'm telling you it works really really well but uh it's it smells horrendous. We got our container prepped our soil added and the fertilizer as well we're ready to either transplant into here or direct sow. I'm going to transplant a tomato right now and one of the cool advantages of growing in containers is I wouldn't be planting a tomato right now we're supposed to have some frost come in the next couple days or so and I don't usually start planting my tomatoes till about maybe three or four weeks from right now but because I'm growing in a pot I could transplant it now if we get some bad days and it is a frost I can bring that inside so it's a cool advantage to growing containers. So what we're going to do is get our area ready here I'm going to take off some of these lower leaves for most plants you want to transplant them at the same height they came out of the pot but like I said before when it comes to tomatoes they root from the stem so we're going to bury it a little deeper than it's come out we'll take out these lower leaves just so we don't bury them then I'm going to pop this out you can see I put drainage holes in these cups too so it's looking good it's not root bound next thing we're going to do let me just lay this down for a second is we're going to add some mycorrhizal fungi this is an inoculant and this forms a symbiotic relationship with the roots and it works really well it doesn't work for cabbages but it works for most plants so we're going to take some of this inoculant sprinkle it right at the bottom just like this and this is just going to bring more life to the soil since we're just growing in a container then we're going to dig down deep in there we're going to check the height we wanted to get the soil to go basically up to that leaf right there we're going to get it nice and deep in there and we're going to lightly bring the soil around it and then tuck it in just like that looks beautiful you can see there's some extra height here so as the tomato grows we'll put a little more soil in then in the future we could add some top dressing if we need or we can even add some mulch we're going to do that add mulch not this second though because we got to water this baby in so when it comes to watering in especially in containers something really important is that we want to have a tray underneath it like this tray here you can use a tray like this that i got for free it's recycled or if you want you can get one of these from like home depot or lowes they're kind of expensive though this thing was like three dollars this was like four dollars so if you could recycle something that's ideal then we want to water for tomatoes it's best to knock it the leaves wet if you don't have to so we're going to water this in make sure it's nice and saturated just like this and we want to water relatively slow like this and we don't want to over water we want to water enough especially in the future so that we have some water that drips down into this tray then when it drips into the tray we don't want too much water overflowing if we're watering too much then what's going to happen is we're essentially just going to be wasting water and we're just going to be flushing the nutrients out of the soil if we're just over watering we want to water enough and slow enough so the water moves through the bucket lands in the tray and then we give the plant time to in the soil to reabsorb that water this will conserve water it'll definitely conserve the fertilizer we won't have to top dress as much so it'll save money it'll help a lot it's a little simple thing but it works really well so we want to make sure we have something to catch that water i'm just going to water this thing in just a little bit more let's stay on the topic of watering for a moment because that tends to be one of the biggest problems or the thing that causes the most problems for people when growing in containers so we want our soil to be damp but we don't want it to be saturated for too long a period of time yes we want to water enough where the whole soil becomes like saturated after it reabsorbs the water from the tray but we don't want to come out every single day in water because we need the soil to kind of dry out a little bit it's almost like breathing we can fully water the plant then we need to give it depending on you know how large the plant is a few days to dry back out watering isn't something you should set on a schedule so for a plant like this i just got it in the ground after we fully water it it'll probably be like three days before i need to come and water it again a good way to check is now that we have fully water this in and after it's saturated you could lift the pot check the weight of it try to think about that weight then come out the next day check the weight again and once the pot gets considerably lighter we know that there's not as much water in here so we might have to come back and water but again it's one of those things where there's just so many factors so at this time maybe every couple days we water three days or so but come july when this plant is huge and it's super hot out we may have to come out every day maybe even twice a day to water if the plant's huge and it's a super like super hot day and there's a lot of sun then it might transpire a lot of water to keep itself cool so we have to regularly come out here and give this plant the water to make sure it doesn't dry out too bad if we let the soil dry out too much then that's going to just bring on a host of problems something like blossom end rot i know it's a calcium issue but blossom end rot happens because the plant can't get the calcium to the fruit and the only way to get the calcium to the fruit is water so if we let our plants completely dry out and then come in with the heavy watering we're going to cause the problems so overall watering is something that you need to lock in you need to let the plant and the weight of it guide you on when you should go out there and water and it's not something you want to set on a schedule you got to kind of let the plants dictate it using a mulch will be super helpful to keep the soil moist for longer it will also help the soil dry out more evenly if we don't have a mulch and the sun hits the soil then that will cause the top of the soil to dry out but not maybe the middle of the bottom so a mulch will be really helpful it'll help conserve water and also to help keep the roots of our plants cooler and that will help the plant grow better you can use a wood chip mulch like this i use this for my tomatoes you could also use like a diced leaf mulch just make sure if you're using leaves that you do dice them up first so they don't mat out the soil another thing i like about these uh five gallon buckets is that they're white they like reflect the sun they don't absorb it and they don't get super hot like a black container will or even something like a black row bag these things get super hot as your plants continue to grow you need to stay on top of keeping them fed once you see your tomatoes and your peppers start to head into production they have flowers and fruit starts to form it's a good idea to go out there and give them a top dressing what i like to do is add some soil to a bucket then mix in some all-purpose fertilizer and add the fertilized soil to the bucket and water it in then i'll add the mulch back by doing this you'll know that your plants have adequate nutrition to continue producing fruit then i'll go by every say 30 to 60 days and give the plants an additional top dressing of fertilizer this way they have enough nutrition to just continue kicking out food especially for indeterminate tomatoes that just keep producing and this will also help your plants fight off disease when they have adequate nutrition to make sure you get even more out of your space when growing in containers it's a good idea to have something vertical set up so your plants can grow up it for instance i've grown tomatoes in containers up a peach tree it's worked great and i've got a double yield from that area getting both tomatoes and also peaches i've also set up an area in my patio where i have a fence up against it where i've grown red malabar spinach up it and cucumbers just so we can get that extra vertical space and that height above us so we can get the most out of the area that we actually have when growing though especially in pots or even in a raised bed you want to make sure you orient things correctly you want the shortest plants to be on the south and the tallest plants to be on the north this way when the sun comes it doesn't uh like get blocked if you have tall plants all the way on that on that south side then it's going to block all the plants all the way in the north so you want to orient your plants the right way to make sure that they get the most amount of light to give you the most amount of fruit in my opinion growing containers is awesome i mean there's a lot of advantages that come from growing in them you're going to use less fertilizer because it's more targeted where you're going to put the fertilizer especially if you catch the water at the bottom and let it get rehydrated you're going to use less water because again it's targeted too you're not going to be watering a whole raised bed just a small pot you're going to use less mulch it's easier to mulch and also you could move your containers around to different locations if they're not too heavy for you if it's a super hot day you want to move it to like filtered shade you can do that at the end of the season if you have peppers you want to move them and overwinter them overwinter them into a garden you can do that too and it's just an incredible simple quick way to get a garden going by growing in containers you could really join the homegrown team even if it's just herbs or one tomato plant on your back porch what matters is that you're getting some of your own fresh homegrown food right off the vine right off the plant i'm telling you there's truly nothing like it once you actually taste something that you've grown yourself i think it'll it'll change your whole outlook on food on gardening and you'll probably end up being hooked just like me that's today's video growers thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed it i hope you truly got something out of it i have so much fun when i can get out here get my hands dirty make some soil mix it up share with you guys my soil mix that has just worked so well for me and there's a lot of people who have commented and said that it's worked fantastic for them also you'll notice i prefer not to use grow bags some people really like to grow bags i don't like them as much i've tried them in the past i have much better luck with just my five gallon buckets and that's what i kind of enjoy using i want to mention if you enjoyed the video to hit the subscribe button hit the like button share with your friends don't forget to check out that merch down below also check out some of the fertilizer that we used it works really well and check out our team grow plant armor to protect your plants things are blooming here things are looking nice the apple tree is blooming soon it's going to have fruit on it we need to protect that fruit so that kaolin clay team grow plant armor will work fantastic for that overall it's been a blast making this video i've made a video similar a container garden video in the past and some people have said one person mentioned that they like to use straw as a mulch i think straw as a mulch is a great option it's harder to get straw around here especially like a good straw just make sure you don't use hay with seeds in it but straw is good they said that they like using straw because even the color of the straw when it's like kind of white it reflects up to the plant they think their yields are high are higher when they do that people have also mentioned that they drill holes sometimes in the side of the bucket not in the bottom of the bucket this way a little soil can pull a little water can pull up at the bottom i don't prefer to do that because sometimes the water can pull up for too long if the plant doesn't absorb it and you water too often that can make the soil go anaerobic also when you drill holes on the side of the buckets to me that can make the buckets crack a little sooner because they do get a little brittle over time so i don't prefer to do that but i do appreciate all the suggestions if you guys have any other good ideas or changes you think i should make with container garden just let me know i've been container gardening for so long i enjoy doing it it's just another way to grow more food and even if you do have a lot of space i still suggest you plant some stuff in containers try to grow your peppers and your eggplants in containers it'll give you more space it'll keep them out of your raised bed and it's just a great way to do it we'll catch you guys on another one real soon we out