New Vegetable Container Garden? This Is How To Fill It!

After seven years as a small space vegetable gardener, I have over twenty containers that I grow in. After trying many different approaches to filling my containers, this is what I found to work best for me.

If you are filling an especially large container, you can do the bottom 1/4 with organic matter like grass clippings, dry leaves, twigs, etc. as long as they have not been sprayed with chemicals.

These are the products I prefer for filling containers:

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

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

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.

0:00 Introduction
1:43 Potting Mix
2:49 Compost

I’ve been container vegetable gardening for seven years now and I now have over 20 different containers of varying sizes around my property where I grow vegetables every growing season now of course it didn’t start off this way I started that first year with just a couple containers and over time I really became hooked and since then I’ve added more containers each year including as recently as last summer now this growing season I’m not adding any new containers to my garden but as I was getting ready for spraying and looking at my different containers to see what I needed to do in terms of amending them I noticed that in these Planters behind me the plastic bin that actually sits inside of them where I have the soil in the plants that had failed and so I needed to purchase new plastic bins to be able to grow in them this spring now these Planters are actually over 10 years old we built them when we lived in a condo downtown when all we had was just a little balcony I grew flowers in them back then I wasn’t a vegetable Gardener quite yet but my point is that the initial time time and cost that it takes to set up these container gardens is something that can really last you long term now I remember that first growing season I had bought my container and naturally my first question was well what do I fill it with so I went to the garden store and I saw potting soil seed starting mix compost garden soil there was dirt just from the ground on my property that I could use to fill it with and I just remember feeling really overwhelmed now I have made plenty of mistakes and learned a lot but over time I have become really confident in my own best practices and what’s working for me here in my garden so if you’re a new Gardener feeling a little overwhelmed with where to start I’m going to share with you my approach to filling a new container so what I want to start with is actually what’s not use and that is garden soil I think a lot of people use this initially and they end up regretting it and that’s because garden soil is really heavy and Compact and so it’s going to make it really difficult for those plant roots to grow deeply and it’s also going to be a real hindrance to the drainage in your container instead what you’re going to want to use is a highquality potty mix now a highquality potting mix is going to have just a couple of different ingredients in it so it’s going to either have a coconut core or a Pete Moss and the purpose of this is for moisture retention and to help irate the soil and then it’s going to have either vermiculite or perlite and these are going to help loosen the soil and have that good drainage now there might be a couple other smaller ingredients in there but what you really want to look out for if you are choosing especially a more cost effective potting mix a lot of times they’ll have bark and like wood pieces and you really want to steer clear of those so a good quality potting mix is mostly going to have those ingredients that I covered so in your container you’re going to do 2/3 of the potting mix and then you’re going to do one3 of a good high quality compost now compost is something that I will scge a little bit on compost is where your plant is going to get a lot of its nutrients and without those macro and micronutrients your plants are really going to struggle now for me personally my approach to compost is I actually use a few different types and that’s because plants will really Thrive when they have a variety of those macro and micronutrients and so the more different types of compost you have the more likely you are to get all of those different nutrients that your plant is going to need I personally use mushroom compost and I use worm castings and then I will use a cotton B compost as a mulch so you have the 2/3 of a potting mix and then for the 1/3 of compost I’m going to mix equal parts of the mushroom compost and the worm castings you’re going to mix all of that and really combine it together and then you’re going to put it in that container now I fill my containers pretty full I leave about an inch at the top but I have found is that as I’m watering them over the coming weeks that soil level is going to decrease a little bit and so I like to fill them full to begin with and I leave that inch for the mulch at the end so at this point once you have combined all those things and you put it in the container you’re ready to either sew some seeds directly into the soil or you want to put your transplant and then for me when I’m direct seeding I will wait to put the mulch on until the seedlings have sprouted but then if I’m transplanting I will go ahead and then do that inch layer of the cotton BG compost mulch once I’m done planting and at this point in the process your you’re officially a vegetable Gardener so now what you’re going to need to do is be patient let your plants grow you’re going to want to continue to add in nutrients I use Liquid fertilizers throughout the season I also continue topping off with that cotton B compost mulch because every time you water the nutrients from that are going to go into your soil and be able to be taken up by the plants through the roots if you’re a new Gardener my best advice to you is to just be patient some seasons are better than others and there’s really no good reason why it’s just how it is so be patient give it a few years start slow start small speaking just for myself it’s really rewarding I hope you found this information useful and are able to get started on your very own container vegetable garden