Backyard Container Garden / 2024

Welcome to the beginning of the 2024 growing season!
I learned a lot last year and can’t wait to see how this season turns out.
I want to share this process with you as I apply what I learned and share all the dirty details of container growing with you! Follow along and get out there and grow some veggies with me.

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welcome to my very first gardening video of 2024 and really my first gardening video ever this isn’t my typical form of content that I post about but on my YouTube channel I do plan on diversifying my content in this next upcoming year and I really want to share my journey in container growing this is my second year container growing my third year gardening but I don’t like to count my first year gardening because I didn’t do any research and I thought that I could just go to my local plant nursery and buy whatever I wanted to buy and plant them in this little raised bed over here that is currently right now really overgrown so please don’t look at it there is a raised bed over there that was left from the previous owners and I thought that I could just plant whatever I wanted in there and it’s no surprise that they all died so the following year last year I decided that I wanted to container grow in this area and it was my most successful garden this was last year it looks like a big mess and although I did get my plants to grow most of my plants did struggle quite a lot and my most successful plants were my pepper plants and really the only plants that produced anything more than once I got one zucchini last year and that was it in my tomato plant just I learned a lot from my tomato plant last year this year I’m taking everything that I learned last year and I’m applying it to this year’s and I’m really finger Crossing that I have a better yield than I did last year I really want to have at least one tomato this year this was my tomato yield last year which if you notice that the tomatoes didn’t even get big enough they didn’t even ripen before they started to get Blossom and rot and I learned a lot from my tomato plant last year so I don’t have my tomatoes planted yet they will be in these 20 gallon containers I’m waiting on my tomato alive fertilizer because I’m hoping that will give me a better chance than I had last year what I already have planted I have two zucchini plants I have a squash plant a cucumber plant and the raised bed over there it’s just strawberries and flowers and then I have a pepper bed pepper bed pepper container I have rain my containers range from 10 gallon to 20 gallon right here and in the back corner those are 50 gallon containers and they’re just wider and you can get more plants in the area than you can in a 20 gon or a 10g container oh also sprinkled in with my pepper bed there is carrots all sprinkled out throughout there that’s my first time doing that so we’ll see how that turns out and there’s a few things that I haven’t quite planted yet which is hopefully you guys can’t hear the wind too much hopefully that’s not messing with the audio too much but a few things I haven’t planted yet are my potatoes and onions and I’m also waiting on a great plant plant and I haven’t planted my tomatoes yet so I still have some things that I need to get in the ground in the container why did I choose to container grow I chose to grow in containers because one it makes me feel like I’m in control I like the fact that I have this container and I know everything that’s in here and I can plant and I can plant something specifically in here that I know the soil has all the nutrients and I like that the second reason and probably the biggest reason reason was this is the only area that I would be able to grow and if you notice it’s concrete I do have over here where all the weeds are and I told you not to look at earlier that is an area that I could grow however when it rains and it is raining season here in Louisiana I’m in zone 9A over there gets flooded so it’s not really a good area to have your crops because most plants don’t like to sit in soggy Roots so because this is the only area I could grow because it’s fced in and I have two Labs who have a big yard that they can run and play in but if they get anywhere near my plants they’re going to think that it’s their little snack and they’re going to eat it so I like to have this area fenced in and the containers are the only thing that I can have over here so that’s why I’m choosing to container grow there’s lots of different options when it comes to container bags this is my second year using these bags they worked really well last year so I have no problems with them and I like the variety of different sizes so I know they go down I think they even have a gallon 5 gallon 10 gon 20 50 and I think they might even have 100 gon I also find this to be a cheaper route in comparison to getting those big raised beds I know they have the beds that you know stand up and are raised off the ground but those are quite expensive and these container bags I think for like a pack of four 20 gallon containers is only maybe 10 or $15 and that’s pretty inexpensive and then you just have to get the soil the fertilizer and the plant and that just seems like the cheapest route for me if you’re thinking about container growing a few things that I learned last year is that it’s very important that you are on a specific fertilizer schedule that’s where I think I struggled the most last year I didn’t really have fertilizer in mine I knew I needed fertilizer but once I did it I didn’t really think I had to continue it in the season but in containers you do so keep your fertilizer schedule in mind this year I plan on riding everything I do in the garden down because I just won’t remember so if I have it written down I’ll know and I’ll be on a better schedule that way the second thing when it comes to container growing you have to be on a good watering schedule it’s not like an inground Garden where you can water I don’t even know the watering schedule for an in INR Garden but I know in your containers especially when it starts to get hot if you’re in hotter climate I’m in Zone 9A it gets pretty toasty down here in the summer times it will almost feel like you have to come out here every day to water they do dry out quite quickly um even when I added Mulch on them last year I still noticed that they were still drying out pretty fast so that’s something that you have to keep in mind when it comes to container growing what I also really like about growing in containers is that I can move them around so my tomato plant last year I planted over here on this side and it this gets sunlight over here all day my the way it’s set up this there’s a shaded area there’s this roof the the edges of the roof come down right here so in the morning time there’s like an L-shaped area that is in the shade but the more the sun comes up you know this whole patio will eventually get sunlight at some point and if you notice that your plant is struggling maybe getting a little too much sunlight I can move them somewhere else and I really enjoy that or fingers crossed the last frost has passed but if it hasn’t I can move the containers somewhere else where they will be safe but I haven’t planted my tomatoes yet and uh that was a mistake I made last year I planted I just got way too excited and planted everything too early and then we had another Frost come in and um killed all my plants so I had to do another wave plants last year boy these are not your snacks I mean you can have a snack once they produce something you can have some but right now they got to grow so please go please thank you love you I don’t know if you guys can tell but I also do have two peach trees back here that are growing in containers this one the furthest to that table over there it’s the youngest I think it’s either 2 or 3 years old I got it last year uh for my birthday and this year it’s kind of struggling um I don’t know if you guys can tell it does didn’t have any leaves on it but it does it is producing flowers but this Peach Tree over here when I went to my local Nursery the other day I saw it and I was like this is an older Peach Tree I need this peach tree cuz I really do want to get some fruit this year I have strawberries and grapes growing but I love peaches and this peach tree already has Peaches on it and it’s definitely older it’s probably around five or six and four to five for fruit tree is when I believe they start to produce so I’m super excited to have peaches this year fingers Crossing that you know everything goes well and it turns out good but I don’t know what’s happening with this other peach tree that’s something that I need to figure out I did just boost it with some fertilizer for the year so hopefully you know that helps and we start seeing some foliage hi no thank you this is the culprit who killed at least six tomato plants last year I’m telling you Tomatoes were my biggest struggle last year when I first got them my dog ate them once twice three times four times until we blocked off this area for good come on S um and then I planted more and then we got another Frost they died and then once the season was in full swing I just couldn’t get the plant to produce anything so tomatoes please let me grow one successful plant last year you want to be the can you sit at least sit my biggest Su my most successful plant last year was my pepper plants and then I also had zucchini oh thank you oh oh thank you I also had zucchini but my zucchini plant last year only produced One zucchini and then I couldn’t get it to produce anything else and that was the best zucchini I ever had in my entire life so I really hope I just hope to do better all around this year let’s see what else did I grow last year last year I grew peanuts which I didn’t get as many as I was hoping to get I also tried to grow a watermelon and that wasn’t successful I also tried to grow pumpkins and that wasn’t successful um is that all I tried to grow last year peppers tomatoes oh I grew potatoes I grew potatoes last year as well and they were super small I think I harvested them too early I got got a little too excited and harvested them too early so I’m growing three different varieties of potato this year so I got to learn better patience that’s one thing about gardening you’ll learn patience that’s for sure I plan on keeping my garden up to date on my YouTube channel for the 2024 season everything that I have going on here I even am thinking about maybe helping grow butterflies I think that will be super cool and super fun there’s just a lot of things that I want to do over here in 2024 and I want to take you guys along with me so if this is something that you’re interested be sure to follow along I do plan on continuing to post my normal bookish content on YouTube but I’m just going to slowly start to integrate other things I know gardening and maybe cooking for sure so stay in tuned for that look he’s already he’s back there he’s looking he’s looking for something to eat does anyone else I have two labs and he is probably the most stubborn when it comes to like eating things my other lab is is running around chasing the Shadows okay this lab no come on S I promise you can have some snacks when they grow they got to grow first thank you guys for watching I hope you’re doing well I hope you’re taking care of yourself okay love you bye