“If size matter the elephant would be king of the jungle” -Unknown
I know a lot of people don’t have a lot of space to garden. I currently have an 8ft wide by 16ft long plot and still I have plants on the patio and outside the garden. I just recently built a ledge to hold my 20 extra potato plants simply because I’m extra. We love home grown potatoes and we were so successful last year I added an extra 20 bags to the garden this year.
If you don’t need 20 bags of potatoes I wanted to show you some small planting options.
This year I decided to try an experiment. I planted each variety of each plant three times. I planted the item in a one gallon bag or pot, a five gallon bag or pot, or a five gallon bucket. First let me point out that a five gallon bucket is actually the size of a ten gallon bag. This takes much more soil.
The reason I did the experiment was to see what would actually grow. I also wanted to see if I could maximize space and still have a great harvest. Let me tell you I was blown away.
I’m still early into the season but the easiest items to downsize have been greens, lettuce, and cabbage. Full transparency I haven’t really started cucumbers and tomatoes yet.
Above is a container cabbage plant in a one gallon pot. I thought it looked fantastic. The tip to growing plants in smaller containers is to purchase container varieties. I don’t think people realize these even exist. If you take some time and do some research you would be surprised. You can grow almost anything in a container.
I wanted to show a side by side picture so you could actually see the progress. I will fully admit that I think this will be the maximum size for the cabbage in the pot. If you plan to simply grow a head of cabbage for yourself you just can’t beat this.
A rectangle pot can bring so many options to your garden. I love these for greens, onion, spinach, and Chinese cabbage.
I’ve shown you a lot of pictures but the bottom line is TRY IT! I planted three of everything so if something doesn’t make it you have two more options. My goal is to see what works so I can downsize pot sizes next year. Soil cost a lot of money. I’m trying to spend my money on seeds not soil.
Let’s Start Gardening. FYI- I still have tons of time to get some seeds in the ground.
