Lettuce will pretty much grow in any well-drained container. It has a shallow root system, so think WIDE over DEEP for lettuces. Also, Iceburg is boring, cheap and abundant. Venture out with more colorful leaf lettuces and other salad greens. (Spinach, Arugula, etc.)
Unless you’re growing the smaller cabbages, ONE cabbage is going to need a 5-gallon pot.
Cabbage is so cheap to buy year-round, and takes up a lot of garden space so I generally grow two or three ‘fancy ones’ in with my flowers for show. (Of course I eat it, too!)
I don’t think you’ll get much bang for your buck growing cabbage in containers. I’d re-think that.
My suggestion for veggies in containers would be: Tomatoes, hot & sweet peppers, cucumbers (with a large tomato cage in there to climb), radishes and eggplant. I’d use 5 gallon pots for those choices. ONE tomato plant and two peppers for every 5-gallon container. Green Beans grow well in containers, too. Probably 4 plants in a 5-gallon bucket.
If you’re using your pots for succession planting, all the better! Lettuce and radishes, spinach, arugula in the spring. You can re-plant all of that again in the fall for more. Tomatoes and peppers will take the whole season to grow, but when your cukes poop out, you can replant that pot (with some freshened up soil) with maybe sugar snap peas (short ones like ‘Sugar Ann’) or more radishes and/or salad greens.
Herbs are VERY happy in pots, so basil, rosemary, thyme, fennel, dill, etc. whichever are your favorites to cook with.
Also, when you’re growing in pots, you’ll need to fertilize all the time. Plan on watering twice a day (morning and early evening) in the heat of summer. I would do two things for that. Use a time-release granular fertilizer in with your potting soil, top dress your pots with compost and every time you water, add a small scoop of Miracle Grow (or whatever water-soluable fertilizer you like) to your watering can.
I know growing in pots seems like extra work, but it’s worth it to do it right for great success.
Also - make sure those pots have good drainage! If you’re using 5 gallon buckets, drill holes about 2” up from the bottom of the pot, along the sides. If your pots already have drainage, elevate them on bricks so they can drain properly from the bottom...and your patio will be less likely to get stained from sitting water.
Thanks. Interesting information. I’ll bookmark this.
https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/lettuce/salanova-lettuce/
$7 + $6 shipping for 25 seeds for the collection in pic(50 cents a seed) I suppose you could order some other packets of seeds without shipping increase; https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/lettuce/salanova-lettuce/salanova-home-garden-mix-pelleted-lettuce-seed-3060JP.html?cgid=salanova-lettuce
Second packet makes shipping $7.50 and it stays until you get to 5 packets at which point it goes to $11.00
Definitely good to grow herbs in pots, and so handy too. Lettuces are great too, but watch out for flea beetles on the arugula. You can sprinkle food-grade diatomaceous earth to help control them, and use grower cloth. The DE also works for controlling striped beetles on cuke plants, when they first come out of the soil.