You don’t need a ton of space to grow your own food. Start with a container vegetable garden.

You can almost taste it. The delicious crunch of vegetables you grew in your own garden. The sweet taste of homegrown tomatoes. The family dinner made with food you nurtured from a seed in the backyard. You may have thought that growing your own food took a ton of space. Or, it took tilling up the limited yard space.

A garden of delicious vegetables is easy to start. Start gardening in containers. We’ll show you how simple and inexpensive it can be to grow your own container garden in limited space.

The Advantages of Container Vegetables

A container garden can be one pot on your patio or dozens of containers brimming with all kinds of plants, vegetables, and herbs. With a container garden, you can start small to gain confidence and then expand into available spaces.

Also, a container garden can move. It can be hard to find that perfect spot to dig out a garden bed. But you can move your containers to sit in the sun in the morning and then move the containers to the shade in the cool of the evening. Whatever your plants need, it is easy to give it to them.

Lastly, anything can be a container. You can use recycled plastic containers, store-bought planters, hanging baskets, or even an old bathtub. Use your imagination, get creative, and make your garden beautiful!

Choosing the Right Vegetables for a Container Garden

If you’re new to gardening, start with herbs. Herbs are easy to grow, very useful in most dishes, and need fairly small containers.

Once you gain some confidence by growing some herbs, move to lettuce, spinach, and baby greens. You can plant the seeds directly into the pot. After just a few weeks, they will sprout. Not long after, you’ll be able to pick and harvest the leaves for your meals. After greens, you can go wild and plant almost anything. Carrots, radishes, tomatoes, and peppers take up very little space. They are perfect choices for your container garden.

Caring for Your Vegetable Container Garden

Again, you can use almost anything for a container. But there are some things to consider when choosing a container to start planting herbs or vegetables.

First, water needs to be able to drain. If you’re buying a pot from the store, they will definitely have a hole for draining. If you are up-cycling something to make your pot, make sure you drill a few holes for water to drain. To improve how well your containers drain, place a small layer of gravel or crushed rock at the bottom of the container before you fill with soil.

For soil, you can dig up dirt from your yard, although potting mix is ideal. You can mix in compost (1:2 compost to potting mix ratio) to improve fertility. As much as you want your containers to drain excess water, you also don’t want them to lose water too fast. Avoid black containers since they will absorb more heat from the sun. Plastic pots will retain moisture better than clay pots. If you like the look of clay pots over plastic, you can place your plastic pot inside the clay pot.

You can start a garden. Get a pot, any pot, and start planting!