Container Gardening Secrets! Find your perfect size!🌱🪴🫛🪻🫚

Everything you need to know to start a container or raised bed garden. From what size to start seeds in, to final container size. Then we explore soil options to save money and how to mix your own potting soil.

#garden #gardening #containergardening #raisedbedgarden

when you want to start gardening but you don’t have much space you’re probably considering container gardening or rais bed gardening either can be a great option but one of the biggest questions I get from everybody is what’s the best container size especially when you’re talking about bigger plants like tomatoes or Peppers everybody’s worried about container size now I’m going to tell you right off the bat that’s a loaded question you ask 50 people you’re probably going to get 50 different answers but today we’ll explore that topic and when we’re done you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for you we’re better to start at the beginning you could go as small as like the 72 cell seed trays but if you follow my videos you know I don’t like those very much you could take a step up to the little 2in which is just 2in across at the top the little 2in pots they work you could take another step up to a 3-in pot that’s one that I used last year and they are very economical you can buy them in giant sleeves I think oh these are 250 from Amazon for pretty inexpensive also what I like about the 3-in pot is you can write right on it with a sharpie what it is and then at the end of the season just get rid of it or you could step up to the 4-in pot spoiler alert I’m just going to tell you up front at this stage of the game planting seeds this is my pick there’s multiple reasons for this pick one it holds enough soil that it doesn’t dry out as fast as these little pots the 3in does pretty good too but the 4 in in my opinion is best Loosely pack this with my mixed soil what I do is I go through and I put four pepper seeds in one tray now I’m talking the bigger Peppers the chanen species the hot peppers the ones that grow larger even looking at like your bell pepper or your pablano those kinds of things if you put one in each little fourth of this 4-in pot there’s plenty of soil in there to keep that moist and all you have to do is Miss the top they’re also made to fit right in these trays so if you don’t know 1020 is a term you’re going to hear a lot 10 in x 20 in that’s all it is you get these trays and you can either get them with slits that allow water to drain or the solid I use mine indoor so I usually get the solids your 4in sheets that you get here fit right inside very nice and neat and all you have to do once the plant starts growing is just lift up little corner take a picture pour it in there and you can bottom water the 4in pot is my favorite these also tear apart if you’re going to sell some of your extra they’re great pots they’re very professional looking you can do that too you can grow everything else in here too Just Adjust how many you put inside tomatoes and peppers typically four one in each quarter it’s going to allow that that plant to grow up without having to up poot like crazy so what do you do when the plant starts to get older and you need to up poot that’s where the question of container size gets a little more difficult and that’s where you’re going to hear all kinds of different directions that you can go in let’s take a look going from your for in pot you’ve got industry 1 gallons now if you don’t know an industry 1 gallon is not quite one gallon an industry one gallon is about 3/4 of a gallon if you’re going to up poot with the intention of up potting again this is the one I’m going to recommend for you they’re very inexpensive you can buy them in a sleeve just like my little 3-in pots you can get them on Amazon I think for 12 or 13 bucks for a big sleeve of them you up poot to these even if you start your seeds early like I do sometimes you’ll still be okay pepper plant can get really large in here it’s going to be okay until it’s time to go to that bigger pot so industry one gallon if you’re going to up pot and then up pot again then we move up to the industry 3 gallon Nursery pots industry 3 gallon is one that quite a few look at that we got a spider very very common in the industry again in cheap compared to what’s out there but some say not quite enough then we go to a 5G bucket lots of questions with a 5 gallon bucket does it matter if it’s food grade or not that’s up to you to make that decision I haven’t found any place local to get food grade 5 gallon buckets so again I order mine on Amazon you can build your own planner box which is something that we started doing this year 10 gallon pot now we’re getting up there the plants get getting a whole lot bigger when you get up to a 10g pot and then the one I use a lot is the wine barrel 15g I use it for a reason I like my plants to get really large I want the roots to be able to spread out and I’m going to show you what the roots do in one of these then let’s add to the chaos of fabric pot versus plastic pot I am going to tell you fabric pot does have some really neat advantages when the roots grow out they won’t continue to circle around a fabric pot like they will a plastic pot they air prune they come out to the end and they basically stop growing fabric pots have really taken the industry by storm and it’s kind of that next big thing gardening doesn’t have that many advancements in it but fabric pots is one of them definitely a good option so which do I pick out of all these options I’m going to tell you if you don’t have a ton of space your 3 gallon hot for most of your normal siiz Peppers is going to do just fine now we do have to talk about when you don’t have a lot of growing medium inside a pot like this the plant’s going to rely on you to give it everything it needs to grow so you have to be ready to fertilize and really every 7 to 14 days you want to fertilize with a water soluble fertilizer when we mix our soil and I do recommend 1/3 compost 1/3 Pete Moss 1/3 paraly that at that time you can add some blood meal and bone meal or some all-purpose granular fertilizer but throughout the year the plant is going to rely on you to give it the right nutrients to keep it alive especially in a smaller container so if I had to pick an allaround container size that’s going to work best for most of the bigger things and for most people who don’t have much space it’s going to be the 5 gallon bucket 5 gallon works great for me you can get it in decorative SI decorative sizes or you could just go with a plain food grade bucket like this one from that point the the larger you go the larger that pepper is going to get I just dumped out one of the 15 gallons and a true sign of how well a plant is doing in in the pot is at the end of the season dump it out and see what the roots did inside come down here and I’ll show you take a look at this for most people this is a giant container container 15 gon I think it’s really good but look down in here and you can see all the roots that made it to the outside of the pot and then still started to wrap around this particular root ball had a jalapeno plant in it a normal jalapeno plant inside my Greenhouse but I wanted you to see that even a jalapeno plant now jalapeno plants can get pretty big but a jalapeno plant The Roots still make it to the outside on the 15 gallon the bigger the container size the bigger your plant now check this out 10g pot this one had my Carolina reaper seeds in it it’ll also show you that these little tags they wear off over the season so be careful so this had Carolina Reaper in it take a look at this not much different than what we saw in the 15 gon you can see the roots made it to the outside I don’t see a whole lot of circling this plant was about 3T tall and produced hundreds of Carolina Reapers now you’ll notice not a whole lot of difference as far as the roots looking they’re very they were still very healthy even after the winter we’re not getting any coiling we’re not getting root bound or anything like that between the 15 gallon and the 10 gallon this is why I say a 10 gallon for most people is just fine 5 gallon you’re going to get a lot more but a 10 gallon pot if you want a big pepper plant can definitely do it the watering needs weren’t that intensive as if it was in one of the smaller plants so 10 gallon might just be perfect if you want to grow a big pepper now let’s take a look at what a big tomato plant did in the 10 gallon you’ll notice when you pull up a tomato plant the the main concentration of roots is in there pretty tight The Roots made it to the outer part of the soil media but if you look they’re not as concentrated as they are in my chinin peppers if you don’t know chenin PE when I say chenin pepper it’s the super Hots basically the really hot peppers are in the chinin family and that’s the bigger pepper plants so if we go through here and we tear this apart you’ll see that yeah we do have some Roots so you can see the tomato plants they do fine in 10 gallon pot I still prefer them in a 15 gallon pot just because of watering so in a 10 gallon pot a tomato plant In The Heat Of Summer can take a lot of watering 15 gallon makes it that much better but the same thing’s going to happen your tomato is going to work in a 3 gallon up to a 20 gallon it’s just a matter of how much bigger that plant’s going to get and how much more yield you’re going to get out of it now let’s talk about rais bed you can look back here in the corner and you’ll see some that I built actually the one that is over the first one that’s over here I got off Facebook Marketplace for like 30 bucks all I had to do was stain it built a big one that has my garlic back here in the corner right now I have 10 of the giant the 6 foot long horse troughs now I know that the horse troughs are going to cost you some money and I acquired them over years I didn’t buy them all at one time right here on YouTube look up The Woodworking pages and they’ll show you how to build these with just fence pickets $3 fence pickets do I like the raised bed troughs yes absolutely the benefit to me is not having to bend over I can control my soil I can control the nutrients that go in it and overall that’s what works best for me do I have a preference between the the built wooden ones and the steel ones I went with the steel troughs because I want them to last a long time as I get older I want to be able to use them year after year it just seems to work for me the wooden ones I line them with plastic and everything and I haven’t had any of them fall apart in years on me yet but I do maintain them I check them out I tighten screws I put new stain on sometimes you have to do that so one thing to consider is when you get into the big rais beds I basically go organic but I don’t add synthetic fertilizers pretty much compost blood meal bone meal sometimes I’ll do my my mix when I top them off but you’re going to get sinkage in these containers so pretty much what I do with these guys I use the hugle culture method so I throw any kind of organic material that I’ve got I keep a pile of big sticks and branches back here let them dry out over the years I I’ll lay those on the bottom if I’ve got leaves if I’ve got cut grass any of that kind of stuff I’ll layer up and I mean I’ll put a good layer on the bottom you would easily be safe to go half of this container in depth in your organic material then just like my seed starting video showed you the mix that I like and it’s not something I created is 1/3 perlite 1/3 Pete MTH 1/3 compost that’s for the initial fill now that first year you’re going to get the soil sink a bunch because it’s going to fill in all those little crevices of all the organic material that you put down there then I’ll come back and usually hit it with that same now I won’t use as much pearlite most of the time I will use Pete Moss or cocoa core um just to fill in a little bit and and do it about half and half with the compost and then I’ll add the Pearl Light until I get the consistency I want and I’ll top it off after that you’re only going to get a couple inches typically uh of sinkage a year but it it’ll take a little bit of time for everything to settle down a month or two before I decide to start planting out here I I’ll just put a bag of compost and I and you’ve seen in my other videos I use the Eco compost it’s made here in Colorado they sell it at Home Depot so I’m assuming they have it at at all the other Home Depots as well but for six bucks I’ll throw a bag of compost right on top scratch it in there with the clubw and then cover it back up and then just let that soil marinade let the microbes and all the beneficial stuff that’s down inside there work it in for a couple months before you stick your plants in here and you’re going to love it I typically only use blood meal and bone meal inside of these I mean I I will add some minerals that kind of thing but in all my big raised beds I stick basically organic as I promised now I’m just going to give you a quick run down of what I think works best and in what situation so let’s start with you’re in an apartment or only have a little more than maybe a balcony or maybe a little patch like I had in downtown when I rented that house I told you about earlier 3 gallon fabric pot for most of your normal size Peppers it will absolutely grow your larger ones just they won’t get as big it’s going to work fine for you and it’s going to fit on balconies or in small areas for tomatoes I would step up to a five or a 7 gallon fabric pot if you’re going that direction fabric pot is a great option and I love how the roots look in a fabric pot backyard gardening where you know you’ve got a little more yard that you’re going to kind of do rows or things like that 5 gallon buckets are a great option you won’t be disappointed growing tomato or growing peppers any of the varieties in a 5 gallon bucket the bigger the plant the more you’re going to have to water my person person Al favorite outdoor if you have the room is the 15-gallon wine barrels you can buy them at Sam’s Club you can buy them order them at Walmart you can get them on Amazon even Home Depot has them they cost you a little bit more but they last a very long time and the soil is not going to dry up as easy between waterings if you have a little backyard that’s my recommendation 15 gon unless you have the room to do raised bed if you step up to the raised beds you’ll never go back you’re not going to hurt your back you control what goes into the soil and the plants get huge so if you can step up to a raised bed garden do it that’s my ultimate recommendation okay let’s be real nobody wants to W sit here and watch me in real time go through and mix this soil so I’m just going to flash through to each adding each one and then maybe a couple of mixing it so you can just kind of see the consisten y I’m looking for let’s start with our Pete Moss Pete Moss is really compacted inside of here two bags of the Eco compost and then of course perite one thing I have noticed here recently Home Depot and Lowe’s they’re using those small little bags like the 8q perite so the best place that I’ve found now I mean check your local hydroponic store they usually have big bags of the coar perite or you can go to Greenhouse mega store then we mix and here’s what you’re looking for you can mix and mix and mix but you just want a good mix of your compost Pete Moss and then get your peite to the point where you want it a lot of this is going to be topping off the beds so I don’t need as much perite as I do in the beginning let’s fill up this 15gal barrel and see how much it takes of this mix now you might be able to see I’ve still got plenty left in this wheelbarrow I was going off memory from the previous years and I didn’t want to tell you wrong but I’m pretty sure I can fill four of those barrels with this mix but I’ll be using it to top off a bunch of my raised beds over here anyway either way it gives you a good idea how you can save money let’s run back over to the table depending on how much you pack this in you can get four to five of these barrels out of just that mix alone and you definitely want to Heap it up even more than what I have it here because if I go through like this and make it all nice and level it is going to sink we’re still over a month out before any of my pepper plants hit this soil so I can get it ready now set it out there I’ll cover it in Pine shavings and it’ll already sink cuz I’m going to start watering it every day just like if a plant was in there I want to get all that good stuff inside the soil working for the plant so when you add it up you’ve got let’s say 17 bucks for the Pete Moss you’ve got six bucks a piece for the bags of compost at 12 bucks and then you’ve probably got6 or $7 in perite depending on how you buy it so perite and compost you’re right about 29 bucks let’s say 30 you know the government’s going to tax the hell out of you anyway uh and so let’s say 36 bucks 36 bucks you just went and filled Yourself four to five of these really big barrels you can put cucumbers tomatoes peppers onion garlic anything you want to put in here and anything you want to grow I even watch people do it with potatoes all the time but I haven’t had any good luck with just Barrel potatoes so I put them in my big raised beds so hopefully this video showed you that you can do it too and you figure about seven bucks a pot to fill the the soil let’s see even say 10 I mean go on the high side it’s going to take a full bag of Happy Frog or or any of the other $3 $35 a bag soils unless you can get it cheaper to fill that thing so hopefully I took some of the fear out of this for you some of the question showed you how you can fill 15 gallon barrels for about 7 bucks a piece I guess when you divide it up instead of 35 bucks a bag for some of the premium soils that are out there and it works really well also I hope I inspired you to grow something and if I did do me a favor and leave me a comment down below YouTube’s changing up the likes do help things like that do help but what helps the most is the comments try to get my message out there let’s get everybody growing and we’ll see you next time