Container Garden Tour +Tips for Success!

Zone 6 (Chicago, IL, USA)
Hey there! Super excited to share the first container garden tour of the 2024 season. I am happy to share my FIVE rules of engagement for container gardening! I hope you and your garden are doing well! Thanks for watching!
Make Easy & Cheap Potting / Container Soil Video: https://youtu.be/Y_Zjqlw7jsg
📸 June 29, 2024
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00:00 Introduction
00:28 A challenge for you!
02:20 Tip 1: Container Size
03:17 Tip 2: Soil Matters!
04:28 Tip 3: Drainage – the Water Needs to Go Somewhere
05:05 Tip 4: Water! Water! Water!
06:21 Tip 5: Amending Containers & Fertilizing!
07:21 Container Garden Tour!
07:58 Take Advantage of Unused Space
08:23 Container Bench
09:40 Growing Food in Buckets
12:24 GreenStalk Vertical Planters — grow just about anything!
15:17 Take Advantage of Unused Space.
19:17 Growing in Style – Functional & Sleek
23:25 Add Color and Interest to Your Garden Space
24:03 Final Thoughts
24:45 Bonus: Closing Credits 🙂

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Below are a few other videos you might enjoy.

GARDEN TOURS PLAYLIST:
➡️ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLihX7VHJnSidbj5izaGik_0I3u1GIr_6T
CONTAINER GARDENING TOURS PLAYLIST:
➡️ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLihX7VHJnSiexFW0BkJI1nIM0bpVRvmuO
GARDEN SHORTS PLAYLIST:
➡️ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLihX7VHJnSifchKw5Lvx7x6xndcCI1WAC
COLLARD GREENS PLAYLIST:
➡️ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLihX7VHJnSifcfKDF3J6CC1Qfj4LtFgsN
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hey good people bavia here I’ve been waiting all season to talk to y’all exclusively about container gardening all right so if you’re someone that grows in raised beds or in ground and have no desire to grow in containers it’s okay if you click away I hope you stay though if you’re someone that grows in containers if you’re someone that wants to start a garden and kind of are trying to figure out the house and the wi and the wees this is going to be for you before I dig in cuz I have a a few different housekeeping items one of them is if you’re growing in containers and you love it share below where you’re growing at the size containers that you love to grow in and the what like what’s your favorite vegetable or herb or fruit that you love to grow in I’m sure I’m going to take away something from it and my hope is that other people that read the comments will too all right so that’s my assignment to y’all I hope you accept the assignment housekeeping item number two big thank yous to those who love like watch comment share and subscribe to be better Garden I appreciate you all if you haven’t subscribed already consider it in addition to container gardening we do a lot of raised bed gardening and growing of all of the things I’m in Chicago Illinois and I Garden in zone six probably more importantly my average first frost date is November the 1st my average last frost day coming into the spring is April the 17th so that matters a lot when it comes to a lot of the annual things I’m growing um the garden zone probably is more relative to the perennial plants but we don’t want to get too far off track we’re going to do a fullon container garden tour all right so this year I’m probably in the middle of kind of the fewest and the most containers I’ve grown in I’ve gone um 30 containers of varying sizes over the years I’ve done as many as 60 this year we’re hovering around 40 containers that we’re actively growing in primarily vegetables and herbs with a sprinkling of strawberries I won’t bury the lead the only fruit I’m growing would be strawberries in containers I want to talk about my five things that are think critical to growing in containers one is the container size that’s like that’s the starting point right so 20 gallon containers all the way down to 2 and 1/2 G gons a good example of this roma tomato plant which is a determinant it can grow really well in a 20 gon container it can grow in my experience pretty well in a 10 gallon size I’ve seen people grow them in five gallons I’ve not had great look with that but I would never plant it in a 2 and2 gallon container while there is a determinant size this plant’s going to get the root ball system along with all the nutrients this plant needs that 2 and2 gallon container just isn’t going to give it to me all right so keep in mind what you’re growing and the size of container you’re growing in and even the time of year so this soil is going to dry out more often in the summer than it would if I was growing something that’s more cool weather like in the spring or fall all right number two soil it makes a difference so I have grown in a lot of these Standalone containers year over year so I have so much used or spent soil and bins all over the place and so I’m continuing to refresh that soil each year and I have a video on the channel which I’ll link where I walk through step by step how I do that if I’m making up soil brand new or if I am a mending soil now the only exception I’ve made to that rule is for my green stocks the very first year that I’m planting in them I am using bagged potting soil to give them the best chance at the best start and then in years two I’ll just amend that soil by again adding some additional nutrients a little bit of compost I’ll mix things up a bit so that is soil I am never using strictly top soil in a container I’m never using strictly garden soil that tends to be too dense for these containers and it doesn’t allow the soil to drain as much as you want and it doesn’t allow those plants to thrive there’s just not enough kind of air flow within that soil that actually brings me to drain drainage these grow bags are great in that they have built-in drainage I’ve used them year over a year I generally speaking like growing in them I do think that during the summer they tend to dry out a bit more than other containers but that I think I’m not certain um but other containers like the plastic containers you’ll see I’ll drill holes in the bottom and sometimes the sides to make sure that that container has an opportunity to let that water ultimately drain out it does tie back to the previous one right the soil makeup is going to tie directly into drainage all right next up again all tied together watering for containers I’ve seen it summer over summer primarily my containers are going to dry out faster than my raised beds and when I used to Garden in ground without kind of the frame of a raised bed so that means I’m ordering these more often I’m in Chicago generally speaking in the summer we have pretty mild Temps so our Highs are generally in the 80s right you know ‘ 90s it’s kind of like a red alert right uh so maybe two times a week where my raised beds I’m ordering more like once a week my green stocks I’m putting a little bit more time into watering those so that’s again maybe two even three times a week especially if we get closer to that 80s hovering over the 90° temps um but you want to make sure that you’re checking just like I would my raised bed putting my finger about an inch or two down to make sure that if the soil is damp down there generally speaking the rest of the container is damp enough where it doesn’t need water if I go a couple inches down and it’s basically dry this container needs water and then once you figure that out once you have consistent temps you kind of know what your frequency is going to be for watering last but not least something I’ve really struggled with but I’m working and getting better every season is fertilizing I believe it’s more critically important for containers than even my raised beds so as we water because we’ve made sure that we have the proper soil we’ve made sure that there’s drainage there what’s escaping not only is water escaping when we actually water some of that good nutrients some of that organic matter right so we need to make sure we replenish that and I’m doing that by way of sometimes top dressing with compost during the season sometimes I’m scratching in fertilizer I use a granular fertilizer most often sometimes I’m just using a water soluable fertilizer but I’m making sure that I’m paying closer attention to the vegetables and their health you know the herbs and the color of those leaves and I’m feeding those containers more often all right so those are the five things it’s time for a container garden tour let’s dig in I’m clearly a big fan of growing in containers not only does it allow you to expand your garden space it allows you to play around with trying to grow different things that maybe you don’t want to dedicate your raised bed space to but then it also allows you to take advantage of the nooks and crannies in your space so let’s say you have no plans on dedicating your entire backyard to your garden as I’ve done that’s fine I really hope you do but that’s fine you can actually just grow along a fence line between the various sizes of containers the things that can grow really well in containers you could really explore some spaces that are really kind of untapped if you will so we have containers in the backyard and front yard just a note this is aroma that was just recently planted out 2 days ago the start has been on my back porch for many many weeks but it’s going to perk up we have basil here so I’m doing basically an herb bench this year I got the idea of a container bench for my buddy Ben over on Sandy Bottom Homestead and I’ve played around with the concept for the last few years and in this space and basically these size bags I really love it so I’ve grown with buckets on top of the container bench I’ve done bus boy containers which are like kind of seven gonish um so all of that said a lot of things can fit in this space they’re sitting on top of milk crates so super super low skill DIY that’s right up my alley um there are a couple of shorts on my channel that show you kind of how I just put this together super easy I have mint I have basil here a couple of different varieties um that’s peppermint this is chocolate mint I picked up this start this is candy Stevia and then I have some Sage here and then the good folks over at handpicked vegetables sent some Gardener some veggies including these two beautiful basil plants there’re actually multiple basil plants in here so this is a Thai Basil and this is an Ever Leaf Emerald Tower basil so my buckets which I primarily use to grow peppers but I do try a few different things from year to year like that middle container is potatoes um but for these four gallons are on the end and the rest of the buckets are 5 gallons these are the buckets that I I go into various grocery stores from time to time and ask kindly you know the bakery section if they have five gallon buckets icing normally comes in them that um that are empty that I can take off their hands because I use them for my garden and more often than not the answer is if they have them they’ll give them to me so I have all kinds of sizes of containers but I really like to grow in these for to five gallon buckets so I have scotch bonnet Sugar Rush that is cayenne and what I do is for the ones I start by seed it’s super easy to take that blue painters tape that I use when I’m labeling my seeds to just transfer it here until I can like kind of really see what the vegetable is and it’ll be a lot easier then to know obviously what’s growing there so I have two bell peppers here I want to see what kind of a larger producing size pepper will do in this size container orange and then this is going to um mature to Red this is a Cali Wonder this is a banana pepper which I don’t normally like to let the fruit put on until the plant bushes out some um so I’m probably going to harvest that and eat it immature and then let the plant continue to grow these are two Serano peppers they have struggled from my grow room to Outdoors but they’re going to Bush out they’re going to produce I’m confident we still have enough time in the season so you’ll see like the containers are this year at least more so on the perimeter of my yard there a couple that are kind of inside the yard but it’s really nice to be able to kind of walk the perimeter and then be able to check on the containers sweet potato starts this is more decorative this is really more for flowers I’ve done some beautiful flower arrangements but since I had some more sweet potato slips I should say uh left I decided to put them here they’ll be ornamental to one point but they probably will still produce some sweet potatoes so why not then I added some of those Cosmos here two different types of summer squash so this is your Ford hook zucchini and then this is I’ll forget the name of it but it’s a yellow kind of Patty pan like squash this is also from the good folks over at handpicked vegetable so I’ve never grown this one before for these three I did flowers at the bottom row and then here I have a combination of some green onions some basil few different varieties of bush beans I have some thyme so I’ve mixed in some herbs a few more flowers some lettuce that is just on the verge of bolting but these leaves should be still tasty there’s more of that candy Stevia green stock here this is the marold tier and then I have those transplanted carrots green stock recommends like up to 3 to five carats per pocket um I just did Two for the transplants in most cases and I’m curious to see how they’ll do I have some parsley some more Sage some additional herbs lado kale um we have some peppers you can see all the buds here this is the Triple delight I grew it for the first time last year huge peppers they put on I have potatoes here curiosity so you know the new potatoes from the store I picked some up they had started to sprout so since the chitting process had started already I decided to go ahead and see what would happen if I plant them some porcelain celery I have forward hook chart I mean come on there are more pepper plants in here more kale I should move this just a little bit to give the corn a little bit of room which is going to be easy enough because I have it on the spinner which ows me to kind of twirl it around but then it’s also sitting on Wheels so I’ll just move this to be more in line with the black planter uh this is oh the Scotch bonnet so remember we saw that as one of the last containers in the buckets or peppers in the buckets all right one more green stock we’ll make quick work of this starting from the top tumbling Tom Tomatoes we have Maragos and celery strawberry ber that I had to replace I tried to transplant them from the front yard bed and they just didn’t like it I did Salvage one of them this one here still has life in it but these others are new plants and then I’m doing sweet potatoes so sweet potatoes are going to grow here these are the sister plants but I also put some in these pockets in the greenstock look at folks over at greenstock last year did every other pocket and they filled up an entire planter and had a really nice Harvest so I love a good Garden experiment I’m going to give it a try in my area all right so we have a few more containers in the backyard garden and then we have some in the front yard Garden because why not so I feel like I need to fill in this one space that’s empty um but this row of containers so every time I show you a container in my Garden chances are it’s grown in this little area here super convenient this is big enough for me to walk in so remember we talked about being able to take advantage of nooks and crannies generally speaking I won’t use the space for anything else so I can walk here I can get my little cart here I can move about um without any inconvenience and I can also grow food in this space so this is a tomato plant in the 20 gallon grow bags here and it has started to take off this is aroma I have a couple of the onions I’m growing as green onions we have the Clemson spineless okra if you’re interested my buddy Ben and I have a seed shop on Etsy it’s in support of our channels as well as the backyard gardens podcast so we have these seeds for sale along with a bunch of other summer seeds as well as fall seeds are in stock now so I have some more green onions two containers of of potatoes and then corn because I’ve seen it on the interweb done successfully in grow bags so we’re going to give that a try all of these containers so far like can grow where they are for the rest of the season I don’t have to worry about moving them around this is probably the exception so these 10g row bags and then behind it are the two and 1/2 gallon pots these are years and years ago probably closer to 10 years ago I bought like a roma tomato plant and you know maybe it’s like 8 years ago roma tomato plant and a couple of pepper plants and they came in this container and so I’ve just saved it and reused it Peppers do wonderfully in this container so jalapenos and then I have let’s see the candy cane that handpick vegetable scent and then I have an orange Bale curious to see how orange well not necessarily orange but bell peppers something that’s going to put on like a large pepper how it does in a small small container and then we have the banana pepper one more potato I think I did one seed potato here Jimmy nardello first time growing that I have a couple of other containers that I still need to plant in that are a couple of different sizes so I’m going to do another pepper plant here I’m still dropping pepper plants here in Chicago at the end of June it’s going to be fine there’s not going to be like the most production cuz it still needs some time to size up but I’m still planting some of what I have all right off to the front yard oh before we go this is the this is one of the two the other black green stock that I originally bought a few years back and I’m going to do fall plantings in it I keep I can’t find where the water discs are for the other two tiers I know it’s somewhere in the garage I’m hoping I find it before I need to plant this out so this will either be a five tier this is the leaf size or it will be seven tiers as it’s meant to be if I’m able to find them ah look at this I was looking for this an aie pepper plant I mean there’s still room right Okie dog so I have just I’m giving myself one more weekend as we round out the month I’m going to get done with this initial planting I’m so close right now I just have a few more veggies and then primarily flowers to finish up but check out all of these peel bugs is’t that something it’s all that rain that’s brought them out and so I am going to same idea some water to rehome them for their Eternal home um we have more of our kind of rectangle like containers I don’t think I mentioned this this is absolutely my favorite style of container to grow in size I picked these up from from either Home Depot or Lowe’s or both over the years this is going to be Scarlet runner beans super excited I’m going to show you another side of it that looks like that I do a lot of duplicates too in one space there’s a thing and another space there’s a thing uh so this space we have that same container with volunteer sunflowers that is something right so excited all right so uh this pepper plant that I transplanted is struggling a bit just based on I think the bully of the sunflower and how big that root system is so the beans here could be doing better but I think again it’s the root system of the sunflower and I’m going to focus on fertilizing these containers a bit more which isn’t something that I’m great at but it’s something I’m working on so oh that Grill bag so that it’s up here to remind me that I have two more of these that one and one more 10 gon that I can plant in and I’m thinking that I’ll put it inside of this little kind of cutout of a space when I pull up the garlic so that’s what’s in my mind I’m not exactly 100% sure what I plan on planting you see a lot of the things I have have at this point in the season are summer plants some of them will be turned over and then some fall things will go in others will live their rest of the growing season life in those containers because they will produce for the rest of the season so this little area here I grew a pepper plant here last year and I think it struggled because of the container size maybe the gardener but also a combination of the shading that happens these sunflowers are coming up in front of this raised bed which I just can’t help myself I had to let them continue to do that uh the last few years they’ve been growing On The Backs side um but yeah so all right but I bring up this space because instead of growing vegetables here especially at this point in the season I’m just going to go ahead and put some flowers in this little Nook again thinking pop a color thinking you know it’d be nice to have something that’s just not green in the space I’ll show you one more version of that so last year I had a tomato plant I know it’s kind of obstructed but there is that favorite container of mine and they’re Scarlet runner beans and I planted them here this year I tried this last year it didn’t work when I was growing them in ground because the roly poliy just attacked the young ceiling so I put this container here and either corner and I have this makeshift trellis that I’ve set up put some wiring here or some string I can’t wait until the flowers start to show up for the Scarlet runner beans I didn’t realize or remember that this was the color of this gladiola that will probably die out by the time these produced but either way I know it in my mind now and super happy about it one of the things that I’m able to do here is I’m able to I’m able it’s a neighbor of my I’m able to show people that food is being grown here right so you look at either one of these corners and I was joking with a neighbor about the Cucumbers here but in this corner you’re going to see green beans at some point and everybody knows what green beans look like everybody knows that it’s food and it’s again my way of sharing with folks what can be done this is an idea I’ve had for some years the only pause I have about it is people walk by if it’s intrusive or not so I’m going to give it a try this year and we’ll see I’m going to put flowers in it though I would have loved to have planted nerum in here but I don’t have any started and I kind of want some color now right you know I don’t want to be patient here but I’m thinking maybe one more here I have it in the back and maybe I can just direct so the seeds for the nerum there while also having some flowers that I actually have transplanted into these two I’m telling you if there was ever a day to trade in what’s now my lukewarm coffee for ice coffee it’s today it’s it’s a warm one but I appreciate yall spending some time with me if you have any questions or comments feel free to drop them below and I still ask that if you love growing containers drop where you live because I want to get an idea of kind of what your weather is like uh your favorite thing to grow in containers and if you can share like the size of that container always collecting information again I I know it’s going to help me and it’s my hope that it helps others all right that’s it look forward to seeing you’all on the next one hey hey good morning how you doing I’m all right uh-huh they’re coming up aren’t they cucumbers yeah I know look I’m waiting that a part of the reason why I put it out there yeah mhm okay nice day you too thank you [Music]