Posted on 01/26/2020 1:07:04 PM PST by orsonwb
I’ve raised both determinate and indeterminate tomatoes in 5 gallon buckets. Had great success with both.
Just remember to add soil to the bucket during the growing season as the soil in the bucket settles.
Drill 2 or 3 small drain holes in the bucket to let excess water drain.
I’m planting tomatoes and peppers in buckets this year. Looking for a barrel to raise some potatoes in.
I cut a big hole in the bottom of the buckets so the roots can go anywhere they want. I get the same production that I got from the raised beds or traditional gardening.
How often do you need to water them?
That doesn’t look like it would work well if you are going to be gone on a week or two of vacation.
Good idea. What do you grow in the buckets, and what do you do with the rest of the empty space?
Tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, etc. I make the cages from concrete reinforcement mesh.
I have no problem enjoying empty space. Less is more.
You get a lot more production from a weedless garden than you do from a garden/weed combination, in my experience.
Great idea.
We have embraced her system and have seen an amazing increase in production with building the cinderblock beds with her trellis system. I still have some permanent (old) asparagus beds, and a hydroponic garden with gravity fed watering from a rainwater collection system, but once set up the cinderblock beds are great.
Plan them out and put them where you want them, because you don't want to have to move them...!
Thanks.
Will try it this year.
Got a terrible wilt problem.
And thanks to you.
Sounds like if I get an appropriate fabric I can build a frame and make whatever size ‘container’ I want.
I also mark out the pepper plants, and in early April plant spinach seeds in between the rows of future pepper plants. Again, by the time the sun starts working its magic on the pepper plants, the spinach has been harvested.
I also have trellises attached with allows for pole beans, sugar snap peas, and other vines to prosper. I've grown almost everything you can think of here in Jersey (onions, scallions, beets, carrots, cucumbers, egg plant, zucchini, lettuce, herbs, rhubarb, cabbage, bok choi, etc. I even used to do red potatoes.
I keep a detailed log of successes and failures, notes and tips. Each winter, I'll diagram the coming garden based on my logs and I always try new stuff. Currently I have six 4' x 8' boxes and two 4' x 4' boxes.
My specialty is pickled peppers - best around. Did 83 pints this past season. Friends, neighbors and family love them. Other favorite is yellow cherry tomatoes - to die for. Harvested over 2,000 of the little buggers last year.
Love the bucket idea!
We have used 5 gallon buckets and large plastic planters for all our garden for many years. Soooo much easier to take care of.
Every year our garden would eventually get overrun with weeds. It was just too much work to weed it properly. With the buckets/containers it is so much easier to maintain.
Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Gardening" book of years ago has been followed up by the author's various sequels. His methods are based on the French intensive method, which (among other things) uses double digging (sliding the top foot or so aside, cultivating the subsoil, then replacing the the top foot) to ensure aeration, absorption of water (rather than bogging or runoff), and prevention of drying out of roots. It also helps free up the minerals that have over the years / centuries / millennia migrated to a point too low for most plants to obtain.
Nice! I’ve seen that done in residential neighborhoods, never put 2 and 2 together!
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