Vegetable Container Gardening:
The best seeds to grow
Even if you don't have a lot of space, vegetable container gardening is possible so you can have your own homegrown veggies and herbs.
Starting Seeds for Vegetable Container Gardens:
You can start many seeds in a sunny window, or get some inexpensive led or flourescent grow lights and start seeds under the lights to get them growing strong for transplanting into their final containers or pots come spring. The cost of starting your container gardens from seed is very low, so you can have a giant vegetable garden even on a tight budget! Vegetables grow great from seed, and are designed to produce in a short period of time, so give it a go! One of the fastest growing vegetables for containers are Radishes, they're super easy to grow and their crunchy spicey sweetness is so rewarding!
ContainerVegetable Seeds
You can grow pretty much any vegetablesor herbs in a container, especially large containers, but some veggie varieties do better than others. See more about our recommendations of the best varieties lower below.
It's also important to use larger containers, at least 5 gallons or more with a diameter of 12-14" + so that the vegetables can grow deep roots and more potting soil to hold water on hot days. Small pots dry out much faster. Bigger pots are always better. We love half-whiskey barrels (which hold 4 cubic feet of soil) for larger plants like tomatoes as they are nice and wide and deep and allow for the besttomato cages to be used.
When choosing vegetables to grow in your containers, look at the plant size on the packet to determine how many plants you can grow in your pot. For example, a tomato, squash or zucchini will take over even in an extra large pot, so keep them one per large container for best success.
Best Vegetables for Containers:
Peppers
Some ofthe best vegetables to grow in containers are peppers. Why? Because peppers are very ornamental plants, they don't typically get many diseasesso they look beautiful all season long, especially when they are putting out colorful pepper pods. In fact, there are many ornamental peppers that look great in containers and put on a colorful show that's even better than flowers! These, shown above, look like flames in late summer!
Bonus:
And, most all peppers are beautiful plans, so you don't have to grow the specific ornamental varieties to enjoy the show. Every pepper plant is a thing of beauty and they look great in containers.
These Easter Peppers, above, are gorgeous in pastels.
Best Peppers to Grow in Containers:
Other vegetables that grow great in Containers:
Herbs
You can also grow herb seeds like Basil, Parsley and Cilantro in containers, they love fast draining potting soil and full sun.
Tomatillos grow great in large Containers:
Shown above we have a large pot planted with tomatillos, a jalapeno and basil. A perfect marriage! We did thin out the tomatillos, we planted them directly in this pot from seed and so a lot more came up than we needed, we transplanted the extras into the garden. Did you know that tomatillos need two plants for the best pollination and production? One plant won't likely produce many or any tomatillos without a second tomatillo plant nearby! So if you plant them, use a very large pot like a whiskey barrel and plant two tomatillos per pot.
Direct Seeding Vegetables in Containers Outdoors
You can direct seed many vegetables like radishes, beans, spinach, lettuce, cilantroand even tomatillos in early spring directly into outdoor containers. Keep them watered!
However, frost-sensitive plants like basil, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers are best started indoors under lights in small containers so you can keep them warm and toasty until it's warmed up to about 50-60˚ F even at night and all chance of frost has passed. We typically start these seeds about 6-8 weeks before the last chance of frost.
Vegetable Container Garden Design
You can design your own vegetable container garden designs easily with just a few vegetable plants. Above are our Easter peppers, with three plants in a large ceramic pot as a centerpiece in the garden. But you can experiment and plant lots of combinations as well, we like to grow basil with peppers, or radishes tucked in anywhere there's an open spot in a container. Experiment and have fun!
Growing your container vegetable garden from seeds?
It's so inexpensive and wonderful to start your vegetable garden from seeds! We like to start many veggie seeds like peppers, tomatoes, basil, and eggplant indoors.Many other seeds like peas, zucchini, beans, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, radishes, and lettuce can be easily direct seeded in the garden.
View some of the most common seed starting mistakes »
This Shish*to pepper and a Yellow Jalapeno Pepper plants growing in a extra large pot are as happy as can be, we had to put in a support to keep them upright as they just kept growing taller! Another good reason to grow peppers or tomatoes in larger pots is that if you need to provide cages for support, you can.
Happy growing!
