Grow Your Own Food In 4 EASY Steps | Vegetable Container Gardening for Beginners

Growing your own food is easier than you think! It took just one container seven years ago for me to start growing my own vegetables and I was hooked. Now I have over twenty containers on my urban property. In this video, I share my best practices for beginning container vegetable gardeners.

For more gardening guides and information, visit https://smallspacebigharvests.com

As shown in the video, below are the products I use for filling containers:

Potting Mix: https://amzn.to/4ldajOX
Worm Castings: https://amzn.to/4iPGsue
Mushroom Compost: https://amzn.to/41PK1cU

0:00 Introduction
0:52 Step One – Find The Right Container
1:07 Container Drainage
1:51 Container Size
2:43 Container Material
3:30 Step Two – Fill The Container
6:16 Step Three – Plant Out Your Container
9:27 Step Four – Continue To Feed Your Plants

Note that in order to support my channel, I do receive a small commission for products purchased through my links, but everything I link to is a product that I personally use and love in my garden.

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Growing your own food is easier than you think. I’ve been doing it for seven years in my urban backyard. And I’m going to tell you exactly how to get started. I remember the first container I grew vegetables in. It was one of those metal tubs and I grew an herb garden. The first time I came outside and snipped some herbs for a dish I was making, I was just hooked and I knew that I wanted to expand my vegetable garden. That was back in 2018. And since then, I have done that and I’ve gone from one metal tub to now over 20 different containers of various sizes here in my urban property in zone 60. Now, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in the years since I started, and I’ve learned a lot, but at this point, I really feel like I’ve figured out the best practices and what works for me here in my garden. So, if you’re wanting to start your own container garden, these are four steps that you can follow to get going. The first step is to find the right container. And I know people really like to get creative with this and reuse and upcycle different containers for vegetable gardening. And while I’m all about that, you do need to make sure that you follow some basic guidelines when choosing a container that you’re going to grow vegetables in. First, you need to consider drainage. To be able to grow vegetables in a container, the water has to be able to drain out. Otherwise, the roots will get water logged and they won’t survive. Now, most containers that you’re going to buy, especially if you’re buying ones that aren’t meant for container vegetable gardening, are not going to have drainage holes already in them. So, for me, I have metal tubs. I have plastic tubs, and I almost always have to drill holes into them. And it’s pretty simple. What I do is I take a quarter to a half inch drill bit, and I just drill the holes in it myself. I space them out every 4 to 6 in or so. You really just want to make sure that you have enough drainage so that the water can get out, but not so much or that the holes are so big that the soil is coming out with it. Next, you need to consider the size of the container. Now, where I see most people go wrong is that they get a container that is not deep enough. Most vegetable plants want to create a deep root system. And so, getting a container that’s maybe 3 in deep is just not going to do it for most of the things you’re going to want to grow. My containers really range in depth. I would say the least amount of depth is about 6 in. And some railing planters I have, most of them are between 1 foot to two foot in depth. If you are new to gardening, I really recommend starting on the smaller scale. So don’t go out and buy a bunch of containers that are really large. Start small. Become familiar with it. Learn about vegetable gardening. Make sure you like it. And then you can always add more and upgrade as time goes on. I’ve been doing that over seven years. So, the last thing you want to do is be really overwhelmed at the very start. The last consideration for choosing a container is the material. Now, people have all kinds of opinions about growing in metal or growing in plastic. And I say that you have to do what is best for you. I personally have several metal containers. I have plastic. I have some wooden raised beds. Back in my beginning days, I did clay pots. So, there’s lots of options out there. And each has its own pro and con. One thing I will mention is if you are upycling a container, just make sure it’s not something that held chemicals or any other material that you wouldn’t want your food touching. If you are going to use wood, I recommend cedar. That’s what we’ve used for all of our containers and raised beds, and it’s just naturally rot resistant, and so it’s a good choice for something that’s going to be sitting outside. Now that you have your container, the second step is to fill it. I remember after getting that first metal tub, going to the garden center, and feeling really overwhelmed. There was potting soil, potting mix, garden soil, compost. There was the dirt in my yard that I could use. There were just way too many options. I eventually learned that what you want is a good potting mix. You want a good quality. Look on the back of the bag. A good potting mix is going to be mostly either coconut core or Pete Moss, and that is going to be for water retention. And then it’s also going to have either perlite or vermiculite. And that’s to help loosen up the soil. Those should be the two main ingredients in the potting mix. There might be a couple other smaller things, but if you see a lot of added synthetic materials or bark or wood mulch, you really don’t want that in a potting mix. It’s going to be bad for the plant’s roots. And so, I would recommend finding a different brand. The next thing you’re going to want to add is compost. So, I always do 2/3 of the potting mix and one/3 of the compost. Now, compost is really important and you’re really going to want a good quality one. This is where your plants get their nutrients and vegetable plants are heavy feeders, meaning that they need a lot of nutrients. So, getting a good quality compost is going to be really important. These nutrients that your plants need are micronutrients and macronutrients. And for me personally, I like to increase the variety of these nutrients for my plants by getting a couple different types of compost. So, I actually get mushroom compost and then worm castings. And I’m going to mix equal parts of those together to make up the one-third of the compost. By getting different types of compost, I’m making sure that my plants are getting as many different nutrient profiles as possible. So, I mix the two/3 of potting mix and the 1/3 of compost. And then once that container is planted, I will then go back and add a cotton bur compost on the top layer. This acts like a mulch and it’s going to help to retain moisture and keep the soil temperature a little cooler in the summer and a little warmer in the spring and fall. Now, one of the things I like about growing in a container garden is that you’re in complete control of what goes in it, whereas people who are planting directly in the ground aren’t able to do that. Now, soil is something that is going to improve over time. Soil is living. There are microorganisms and bacteria and all kinds of things in it. And so just know that that first year, you’re going to have good soil as long as you invest in good quality products. But over time, your soil is actually going to get even better as those microorganisms have time to interact with each other. So each year you just need to make sure that you are amending it, putting good nutrients back into it, and you’re going to be set. The next step is my favorite. It’s getting to actually plant out your container. Now, you’re going to start things from either seed or transplants. And there are some vegetables that are going to do better if started directly from seed into your outdoor container. These are mostly going to be root vegetables. So think about things that are going to grow primarily under the ground. Carrots, beets, radishes, turnipss, uh peas and beans are also better started from seed. And so you have that option. And then you also can start from transplants. Now, as a new gardener, I would really strongly recommend that you start as much from transplant as possible. While starting things from seed indoors is more cost effective, it is more challenging and there’s a lot that you can mess up with it. And so, if you’re a new gardener learning everything, I would start with those transplants. And then once you get comfortable after a couple of years of really understanding how to be a vegetable gardener, then you can start taking on that added challenge of starting your seeds indoors. That’s the approach that I had. And in most places like where I live, there are nonprofits and local farms where you can buy transplants at a relatively low cost. So I would recommend going that route except for those vegetables that really are better that you start from seed that I mentioned before. Now, a lot of times I see new gardeners talk about how excited they are to grow tomatoes. And of course, there’s nothing better than a homegrown tomato. But keep in mind that there are different vegetable plants that you’re going to grow from spring to summer to fall. These are all different seasons. Spring and fall are going to be more similar. But those cool season versus those warm season vegetables is something that you need to understand. And if you are just thinking about growing tomatoes, you’re missing out on a lot of vegetables that you could be growing in the spring cool season like kales and lettucees and radishes, peas. There’s a lot of great vegetables in the spring. So, make sure that when you’re container gardening, you’re really taking advantage of each of those growing seasons. And in my garden, I start planting seed in early March. So depending on where you live and if you use frost cover to extend your season, you can really make the most out of each of those growing seasons. I will also add that I like to plant my vegetables pretty closely together. So if you look on the back of a seed packet or look up different vegetables and what they require, there’s usually a recommended spacing between each plant. And as a new gardener, I would recommend that you follow that because it’s really good to learn those best practices. And then once you’re comfortable with it, you can break the rules a little bit later. That’s what I did. So I really stuck to those guidelines my first several years and then really it’s just been in the last two or three years that I’ve started planting a little closer together. Just some vegetables, mostly my leafy greens and they’ve done fine and I’ve learned how to do that. But it’s something that I’ve developed over time. So as a new gardener I would recommend follow the rules and follow the guidelines until you get the hang of it. So at this point you have found your container. you’ve filled it with good quality potting mix and compost and you’ve planted it out, you’re officially a vegetable gardener. This last step is really just for the rest of the season and it’s just making sure that you are continuing to feed your plants nutrients. Like I said earlier, vegetable plants are heavy feeders and so you want to make sure that you’re continuing to give them nutrients. My approach to this is first to have that really good quality compost, but then I also add supplemental feedings throughout the growing season. I personally will use a liquid fertilizer. I make sure it’s organic. It doesn’t have any synthetic ingredients in it. So, organic liquid fertilizer and I put that in a watering can about twice a week. This is something that I have really noticed makes a difference and I recommend it. It’s not required, but you will have a better growing season and a better harvest if you’re adding some fertilizer. I recommend just a general balanced fertilizer for starting off. There are certain fertilizers that you can use for like tomato plants and other flowering vegetables, but I would say for a starting gardener, just get a general kind of all-purpose fertilizer that you can use on all of your plants. And then over the years, you can figure out some of those more specific fertilizers to use for different situations. If I could give a new container gardener one piece of advice, it’s just to be patient and allow this to be a learning process. Being a vegetable gardener over the last seven years has been really rewarding for me and I hope that you enjoy it as