Growing Edibles In Pots

Escape to Purpose: Raising Vegetables and Fruit in Containers

If you don’t have space for an in-ground vegetable garden, know that you can grow a wide range of edibles in containers. Pots and boxes are also good for people who have little sunlight in their yard, but do have sunny areas on a driveway, patio or deck.

Vegetables that are good in containers include chard, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, bush beans, and most salad greens. In fact, about the only veggies that are difficult to grow in pots and boxes are corn and the larger squash varieties. Here are 9 suggestions and tips for growing edibles in containers.

1. Plant lettuce and other greens from seed. When you’re growing salad greens from seed you can pack the container with young plants and either thin them as you harvest for salad, or cut off the older leaves and let the younger ones continue to grow.
2. If you’re planting in smaller bots instead of deep or larger boxes, put one plant per container.
3. Fill larger containers with the Coast of Maine Raised Bed planting mix, or a combination of loam and compost. Bumper Crop from the Coast of Maine is also a good soil amendment to add to loam in containers.

4. Make sure any container you’re using has open drainage holes, and do not put rocks, mulch or other materials in the bottom; fill the entire container with soil.

5. Smart Pots, which are fabric grow-bags, can be placed anywhere it’s sunny and used to grow a number of vegetables.

6. Tall containers make it possible to grow root crops, and you don’t have to bend over to pick or tend your vegetables! These tall boxes can be placed on patios or even around a swimming pool, and used to grow a mixture of edibles and flowers. Design idea: plant vining Nasturtiums along the edges of tall boxes so that they cascade over the pot. Nasturtium flowers and leaves are cheerful and edible.

7. If you’re growing fruit in containers, be sure to use plastic, wood, metal, or fiberglass pots or boxes that can be left outside all winter. Blueberries and strawberries do especially well in pots.

8. Water containers well when the soil is dry. In the heat of the summer, that might be every day, but in cooler weather your containers might only need watering every four or five days. Get in the habit of feeling the soil and looking to see if there is a gap between the soil and the container; when root balls are very dry, the soil shrinks away from the sides of the pot.

9. Have some arugula or lettuce seeds on hand for sowing throughout the summer. If a particular crop has finished, you can loosen the soil and scatter seeds on the top for new salad greens.