Planters and pots aren’t just for adding flowers to your porch or patio—they can be the perfect place to grow your favorite fruits and veggies so you can harvest a few strawberries for your morning yogurt or the greens for a salad—especially if you have a very small space to fulfill your farmer fantasies.
And while you can attempt container gardening with pretty much any fruit or veggie out there, choosing wisely can help ensure you get the biggest yield out of every inch of growing space you have. “Any crop that has a continual harvest instead of a single harvest is a good option for smaller spaces,” says Carly Mercer, gardening expert at Love & Carrots. “Think about a pepper plant versus a carrot, for example. You can harvest many peppers off one plant that takes up about 1.5 square feet of space over the course of the season, or you can harvest one single bunch of carrots from that same space after 70 days of waiting.”
Want to get the biggest bang (and bumper crop) for your buck? Try these expert-approved plants that thrive in containers.
Meet Our Expert
Carly Mercer, gardening expert at Love & Carrots, a woman-owned urban farming company
Joseph Skibbie, founder of Beats, Beds, and Browns
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Tomatoes
Tomato plants can become big monsters in the garden, so you need to choose your variety carefully. Determinate tomatoes tend to have a bushier growing habit that’s well-suited to a container, but they’ll produce most of their fruits over a shorter period of time. Use staking and pruning to keep the plant in check, and look for varieties meant for containers for the best chance of tomato success. (Also, small tomato varieties, like cherry or grape tomatoes, often thrive in smaller containers.)w
Related: You Could Be Planting the Wrong Type of Tomato for Your Garden—Here’s How Experts Pick the Right Kind
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Strawberries
Strawberries are a buy once, reap the yield for years plant (aka an edible perennial), and they can reproduce to fill up a container. Look for everbearing varieties so you can pick berries all season long.
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Peppers
Experts recommend peppers as an easy-to-grow container plant that provides veggies all season long. Whether you like spicy or sweet varieties, they’ll thrive in a container in a sunny spot.
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Leafy Greens
Spinach, kale, chard, collard greens, and other leafy greens are popular picks for containers—and you can keep sowing new seeds into the container every few weeks to continue to yield fresh greens.
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Cucumbers
Use trellises to make the most of your container space for cucumbers, or look for small, bush-style varieties that are geared toward containers.
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Lettuce
Just like leafy greens, lettuces do well in containers, and you can sow fresh seeds every few weeks to maintain the crop. These will need some shade to thrive in the hotter summer months. If you don’t have a shady spot, you can use a shade cloth.
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Herbs
Herbs are an easy-grow option for containers, and our experts recommend cilantro, dill, basil, and parsley for your garden.
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Sugar Snap Peas
Joseph Skibbie, founder of Beats, Beds, and Browns, suggests sugar snap peas as a favorite crop that thrives in small spaces or containers.
Tips for Helping Your Small Garden ThriveDesign for the sunlight
Fruits and veggies are almost entirely sun-loving plants, so you’ll want to look at how much sun your patio gets. “Understanding the way the sun travels through your yard is important,” says Skibbie. That includes keeping in mind how your veggies might shade other plants when they’re at full height to avoid having a tall tomato plant block out the sun for your spinach.
Tips
If you have the time and energy to do it, consider putting your large containers on caster wheels, so you can move them around the yard easily to get maximum light—especially as the angle of the sun changes over the season.
Look for plants labeled container- or patio-friendly
While you can always try your luck with any veggie at the garden center, garden companies are constantly breeding new varieties of vegetables and fruits that are made specifically for growing in containers. Choose one of those, and you’re much more likely to be successful.
Consider fruits and veggies that work together
Container gardens may not yield enough to keep you from hitting the farmer’s market or the grocery store, but they can offer you something fun: an opportunity to grow everything you need for a certain dish. Pizza gardens (with tomatoes, garlic, oregano, and basil) and salsa gardens (cilantro, onions, tomatoes, and peppers) are two popular versions of that idea, Skibbie says.
Plant over time
Planting doesn’t have to be a one-and-done deal, especially if you’re planting greens or other veggies that keep producing. “You can succession plant, and add more every three weeks,” Skibbie says.
Use deep containers
Bigger and deeper containers can help ensure that your plants thrive. “Bigger is better! I recommend at least 18 inches of depth and width in a pot or planter, and ideally it holds about the same amount of soil as a 5-gallon bucket at a minimum,” Mercer says. “If you want successful plants, you need to give them room to establish a robust network of roots and avoid the soil drying out frequently, which stresses the plants. A larger pot or planter will retain more moisture and give the roots space to grow.”
Max out vertical space
You can grow up, not just out. That can mean using pots with trellises for vining plants like beans or cucumbers, or growing baskets for tomatoes or strawberries.
Use good soil
The soil you use tends to be an afterthought, but it definitely shouldn’t be. Opt for a lightweight potting mix that’ll provide the nutrients your plants need to thrive.
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