For countless reasons, from limited space or mobility to the local soil composition and length of growing season, container gardening can be an incredibly powerful tool if you wish to have a bodacious and diverse garden. We are going to walk through three of the core benefits of container gardening and how they can be used to create the exact growing conditions to accommodate your garden dreams.
These benefits become especially applicable where the green space is little-to-none, such as in apartments and large cities! Container gardening can be used for something as large as outdoor pots for planting fruit trees that may otherwise not thrive or even survive in your local soil or as small as a series of windowsill-dwelling potted herbs, such as rosemary, thyme, and basil. With the right soil, container, and container gardening can offer most or even all of the benefits of a raised bed without the required construction or the relative permanence.
First, container gardening gives you the power to cater directly to a plant’s soil and nutrient needs without having to balance all the factors of remediating your native soil or building raised beds. The next core benefit is a vast one! Gardening in containers can help you get more out of your growing space, regardless of if that growing space is in a garden, on a concrete landing, in an empty lot, or in some found space inside an apartment. Finishing our list is the accessibility that container gardening provides to those with limited mobility.
1. Picky Plants!
Containers allow you to have various soil structures and to apply a specific combination of nutrients; therefore, you can accommodate for a more diverse selection of plants compared to what you can do with native soil. Exercising control over the soil structure and nutrients is one of your best tools for investing in your plant’s healthy growth and production. For example, if your native soil is alkaline, but you are looking to plant blueberry bushes that need acidic soil, then you can fill a suitable container with acidic soil while feeding an acidic nutrient blend to the plant. Through multiple seasons of carrot cultivation in the high clay content soil that we have in so much of the Pacific Northwest, our Director of Operations, Denise Beins learned that root vegetables like carrots and parsnips do best when given a looser soil structure.
Sunlight is another factor that you can have more control over with container gardening. As long as you have a way to transport them, plants grown in containers can be moved to follow the exact sun conditions needed as the seasons progress. Learning the right blend of soil, light, and nutrients for each plant you want to grow could prove overwhelming, so take care as to not to overburden yourself by trying to know each plant’s needs all at once! I recommend focussing on learning the needs of a couple or few plants per season. Pick your favorites, and after a few seasons you’ll have a proficient and well-rounded understanding for growing your ideal palette of plants. 🙂
2. Making the most of your garden space
Container Gardening Outdoors
Container gardening can help you get the most out of outdoor space! Added to the benefits of customizing your soil structure and nutrient mix, container gardening can make seemingly unusable land into a bountiful part of your garden! Areas that have been paved, laid with gravel or stones, or have low-growing ground cover or brush that could suffocate young seedlings can all become healthy growing space with an intentionally selected container, soil, and nutrient mix. Containers can also turn an apartment patio into a garden. You can even cultivate otherwise invasive plants, such as many varieties of bamboo and mint, without having that worry! Another fun idea includes companion planting mutually beneficial plants, or simply planting fun arrangements/combinations, such as a “Salsa Planter” with cilantro, perilla, hot peppers, and garlic chives.
Container Gardening Indoors
Indoor container gardening truly makes a night and day difference! For those without access to growing space otherwise, container gardening can be the difference of not being able to grow anything to being able to grow nearly any plant you’d like! Whether it’s sheer excitement to start cultivating your own garden or seeking access to whole fruits and vegetables, your local community is probably filled with testimonies of people experiencing the empowerment of having an indoor garden you can look to for inspiration. With GYOV, your online community will certainly have some sources of inspiration to share! Or maybe you have some container gardening experiences to share in the comments below? Please feel free to share that below and be a patron to some else’s garden motivation!
The most common examples of these include hanging gardens, windowsill gardens, and a seed starting station. Hanging gardens utilize a space to its fullest by efficiently utilizing the vertical space. Windowsill gardens bring the vivacious energy of the garden into your home, and their foliage can also help illuminate your home by reflecting sunlight into the space. A seed starting station can range from simple or elaborate; from a warming mat and a grow light on a side table to a wire rack arranged with warming mats, a grow light, air circulation, and a drip tray below to protect floors when watering.
3. Accessibility for gardeners with limited mobility
It is a common challenge for a gardener to come to a time in their life where they may have physical limitations from the methods they have used to garden. Whether it’s temporary from an injury or their body physically losing mobility with age, For those with limited mobility, there are many solutions for enjoying fresh veggies using container gardening!
One method is utilizing large, tall containers, measuring 2-4 feet off the ground, although these may require assistance to get started. These may be wood framed, large plastic or materials such as terra cotta (a couple options are showing below). One thing to consider is you may want these large containers to have wheels so they are mobile incase you can move according to the sun or for other reasons.
Another option is to incorporate some of the indoor gardening ideas mentioned above. You can grow lettuce, herbs and more in a windowsill and add fresh produce to your meals.
Using containers in your garden can expand possibilities for you so that you can achieve your garden dreams! There are lots of gardeners just like you (and us here at GYOV) who have found creative ways to enhance their harvest and enjoy the beauty that cultivating plants brings into your life!
Related articles you may enjoy:
Small Scale Vermicomposting You Can Do Anywhere
Getting Started Growing Your Own Vegetable and Herb Seedlings
Keys to Partner with Mother Nature
Masterclass on YouTube:
Please share in the comments below ways that you’ve added ease into your gardening process with container gardening.
Thank you for the amazing blog post!
Our 60 year old neighborhood is so shady that the best sun is on the newly added deck on the west side of the house. There I grow my favorite varieties of hot peppers in large pots. When a thunderstorm is coming I can easily slide them under the eaves of the house for protection — something that I couldn’t do on the ground beneath.
In response to Jacquie Walburn,
Quite happy to list a few ideas/options for container garden materials, and to do a bit to evaluate the different options!
Some of the easiest to access and work with are likely purchasable plastic garden bed containers which come from various companies in all different shapes and sizes to fit what you want. These often last a good 3-7 years depending on the quality.
Galvanized steel is often the ideal choice for those able to come by it due to its self-supporting structure and its strong resistance to corrosion and therefore long life! There are products such as the Forever Garden Bed (https://forevergardenbeds.com/) which are made from galvanized steel in a premade shape for a garden bed; however, one could likely purchase the necessary materials to build one for themselves at their local Home Depot-like store including the galvanized steel and corner brackets or corner posts to give them structure! Be careful of sharp edges around kids as well! Either grind them down smooth or cover them.
The next option is wood! Wood of course will not last as long as galvanized steel, but it will provide better aeration to your garden. There is the traditional option of building a container out of wood with 2×4 boards or 2×8 boards with either 4×4 posts at the corners or you can use metal brackets to brace the corners. The 4×4 corner posts are usually the part of a raised bed/container garden to rot out, so using metal brackets instead can help prolong the life.
Often people like having their container gardens built on wheels (“Rolling garden beds”) in order to be able to follow sun patterns or even move inside to avoid particularly harmful weather. Vego Garden Beds provides options for this (https://vegogarden.com/collections/garden-beds)
Layout options I feel are nearly limitless. Often that will come down to your personal wants and needs from the space which we as gardeners often refine over time. If we can help with your garden layout in any specific ways we would surely love to help!
Quite appreciate your question! Cheers!
In response to Vee,
A few options for food safe containers would be pickle or sauce/condiment buckets which restaurants often receive their food in. These can usually be easily acquired from restaurants just by asking. If they don’t have any on hand at the time, they are often happy to save them up for a week or so in order for you to come back for them. Particularly for young plants, even large yogurt containers, plastic ice cream tubs, or milk jugs with the top cut off can be used. Be sure to drill holes for drainage if opting for either of these options.
Thank you so much for asking! Let me know if there is any further way we can help!
In response to both Vee,
A few options for food safe containers would be pickle or sauce/condiment buckets which restaurants often receive their food in. These can usually be easily acquired from restaurants just by asking. If they don’t have any on hand at the time, they are often happy to save them up for a week or so in order for you to come back for them. Particularly for young plants, even large yogurt containers, plastic ice cream tubs, or milk jugs with the top cut off can be used. Be sure to drill holes for drainage if opting for either of these options.
Thank you so much for asking! Let me know if there is any further way we can help!
In response to Joyce’s question,
There are conflicting opinions on whether polystyrene foam/styrofoam is a safe medium to use for a container garden; however, it can be summed up fairly briefly! Some say that the material will leach into your vegetables, but here is where the confliction is. Currently there is a lack of evidence out there about this, but what currently seems like the answer that holds the most water is that polystyrene generally is not going to leach into your plans because it would first require the material to break down which synthetic materials such as Styrofoam typically first requires either high-heat or chemical solvents to begin breaking down.
All this to say, it is likely that polystyrene foam is a suitable material for a container garden IF particularly high heats are avoided. An experiment with a styrofoam cup which I’ll link to below mentions the temperature range of 75°F-176°F as the range which they found leached into the water in the cup. Other sources say it is safe to do so as long as it’s kept out of direct sunlight.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2018.00071/full#:~:text=(2008)%20found%20styrene%20concentrations%20ranging,min%20in%20a%20polystyrene%20cup.
Hi Stacey,
I’ve learned aLOT from you. Thank you SO much for encouraging us to grow food in whatever space we have.
It’s been very enjoyable! Even when my plants were sabotaged by some horrible people who have keys to my apartment. I keep going. I will NEVER quit no matter what.
One question. Is it OK to grow food in polystyrene boxes?
Cheers!
Are there any suggestions for food grade containers?
Also, the wooden frame as pictured above?
Thanks.
we live in Israel and have a large organic vegetable garden. every 7th year in Israel is a sabbatical for the garden (aka Shmitta) and among some of the practices is all planting must be done before the Jewish New Year-no spring or summer garden during this year. we decided to begin a hydroponic indoor garden during this years “sabbatical”and are enjoying it so much that we will continue with the hydroponics even after this year has ended, as well as continue with our outdoor raised bed garden. we currently have several hundred jars of various leafy greens-5 kinds of lettuce, 2 kinds of asian greens, 4 kinds of beets that we are growing for the leaves, arugula , culinary herbs, cress , 3 kinds of kale, arugula and spinach. the jars sit on shelves which we have fitted with led grow lights. very differernt from the outdoor garden! and a different kind of container garden that we think is worth looking into!
Got any pics of different types of container gardening?
Lay outs, pairings,….