Veggies in pots.

Hello. Bending over to plant, check for bugs and harvest isn’t as easy as it once was. This year I’ve experimented with growing all sorts of things in pots. Here are some observations and questions.
I started with yellow squash. Three plants in large pots, three in the ground. I have gotten good yields from the ones in my gardens. The plants in pots started out great but quickly faded. All three died from vine borers after minimal yields.
Surprisingly growing cantaloupe in pots fared better than squash. All of them are pretty  healthy and should give a surprising good yield.
It hasn’t been easy though. I water them nearly everyday. I planted one in a fruit tree guild and it’s doing really well. It will produce at least two large melons.
Now I’m onto poblano peppers. I started them from seed one month ago. I’m attempting to grow them to maturity in 2.5 quart pots but I’m not sure how that will go. Advice?
My last question is about cabbage. Bermuda grass is all over the garden I wanted to plant them in. I’m considering going with pots again. Has anyone ever attempted to grow cabbage in pots? If so, how large of a vessel would I need.
Thanks for reading and for any advice offered.

What are you using to fill the pots with? Garden soil just as in the ground or soilless potting mix purchased or making your own?

My plan is to use a mix of garden soil plus finished and unfinished compost. I like adding the unfinished stuff for drainage.

What is the volume of your pots? I find that it matters, both for retaining water and soil health.

I grow a lot of tomatoes and peppers in pots (and a lot of other stuff in terraced beds and conventional garden space.)

I find that any volume much less than a half oak barrel causes vegetables to suffer without artificial inputs. They are such heavy feeders, and a certain volume is needed to keep the soil systems happy.

I think drainage and soil compaction are potential issues also. Straight garden soil seems to compact too easily in pots. We use a mix of compost, inoculated char, and the growing medium (accumulated and reused over the years) from greenhouse-purchased flower baskets and started tomatoes. The perlite doesn't break down, so it accumulates year after year.

Hi Douglas. I grew the squash in ten gallon pots, and the cantaloupe in five.
I make my own potting mix out of compost and perlite. After everything begins to grow I mulch the plants with grass clippings. When I got rid of the dead squash I did notice how root bound the plants had been. It was pretty amazing.
The squash I planted in my gardens are huge and still somewhat healthy.
Like you I’ve had success with peppers and tomatoes in pots but will probably not try squash again.
Have you ever tried to grow peppers in smaller pots? Specifically 2.5 quart pots? I’m wanting to try them because I’m nearly out of growing medium and refuse to buy any. I’m stubborn to a fault on this one.

I started growing in pots due to the voles, wood rats and rabbit problem.   The rats still jump up into the strawberry beds, 18 inches off the ground, and raid the fruit.
Those black pots get hot quickly, drying out and overheating the roots.  Some like it hot, especially the hot peppers.  Rest, I put a suspended cover cloth over, like broccoli, so they can survive.  
Never was able to grow eggplant here before, with the cool nights.  Pots worked great for that, but I put plenty of compost (we make our own), trace minerals plus extra cal/Phos, and humate and worm castings.  That makes a super potting mix, mixed into native soil.  For our compost we use goat manure, poplar and oak leaves, grass clippings, weeds and turn it often so it doesn’t become anerobic.  Guess those eggplants like warm roots too.  I buried bottoms of some of the larger pots into the soil about 4 inches, for the pole beans, to keep them cool.  Getting 3 # a day sometimes, off about 12 plants.   They are growing over a cattle panel trellis bent to make a tunnel.  Deer proof and has chicken wire on all sides and front door to keep out critters.  Easy to pick and it provides partial shade for lettuce in pots below.  It can’t take the summer heat without shade.  

Sweet potatoes are in totes up on a slatted table with pvc hoops and row cover.  Look like little covered wagons.  This is to keep them warmer at night which they need to produce tubers.  Also we wrapped rough edges on the cattle panel wire ties so we can throw greenhouse plastic over for winter and extend the season another month or so.   Still experimenting.  Getting older makes for bending and planting/weeding/harvesting very difficult if not impossible.  

Constant rain has made fungal spots develop tissue necrosis on the eggplant, so I’ll go out and spray diluted whole milk when the rain stops and reapply every time it rains, to protect them from further damage.  We had 3 months of almost no rain, now it is every day, lots getting waterlogged.  Pots drain better if a little sand is put in the mix.  

We cut thin lathing strips and wove through the cattle panel perimeter fencing around the garden to (finally) keep deer out.  So far, so good.  

Can you grow the young pepper plant in 2qt pot to buy you some time to gather more material for repotting later? Pepper roots are not as abundant as tomato's. I am actually considering growing miniature varieties of watermelon and squash in pots next year. They have small leaves and weaker root systems and can't compete with other plants in the polyculture garden.

Scott,   Your OP suggested that your motivation here is the increasing strain of bending over and the increased ease that pots with elevated plants can offer.  If a location exists with a natural hilled (hugel?) amount of soil, would it be feasible to place the pots onto the soil berm/bed which would elevate them even further?  For sure the same issues with watering would be apparent, but one thing we've noticed is that plants left in pots on top of soil eventually force their roots out of the drainage holes and into the soil below.  Depending on the daytime heat and temperatures, accessing the a water in the hill below the pots may give extra plant height while still using the natural soil bank for stretching its roots. .... ???  Just a possibility.

Hi May. I’m actually going to attempt to grow a few poblano peppers to maturity in 2.5 quart pots. The rest will go in five gallon pots when my cantaloupes are finished. I got the sweetest cantaloupe from a pot today. It’s small but extra good! I’d love to see how your watermelon and squash do next season!
That’s a really interesting observation John and something I’d really like to try. Do you think more drainage holes should be put in the pots to encourage root expansion?

Scott, I've been planning for that day! I suggest you go  big or go home, or whatever that expression is. My most recent beds are made out of salvaged heat-treated packing pallets. They are ~ 4 ft wide by 6 1/2 ft long by 30 inches tall. I've got a pair of them and more are in the plans. The 30" tall is kitchen table height, so no bending. They're *very* solid, so leaning on them isn't a problem. The bottom of them is filled with punky wood - big rounds of it - so they hold the water better. Sort of like a short hugel with straight sides.

At the moment, one has 6 tomato plants and some kale that's going to seed. The second one has 7 hull-less pumpkin seed plants, a bunch of Max Filet beans, a pair of basil plants and a volunteer potato. Everybody's really happy. We're in a heat wave, so I do have to water, but not nearly as frequently as I would if the punky wood wasn't there. I filled the bed above the wood with really crappy "dirt" and home-made compost and some extra biochar (beyond what was already in the compost). If we hadn't had such a wet spring, I would have planted some "fake it Olla pots" to make watering even easier.


I also have a bunch of 1/2 barrels (plastic ones). I drill the drainage holes about 2 inches up from the bottom so that it acts as a reservoir. I have also learned to put punky wood in them at the bottom.  I have grown cabbage in that size, but don't recommend squash, beyond small stuff like cucumbers. Mini-toms are OK too.  However, I find them hard on my back - not short enough to kneel but too short to lean. If I have to do much work on one, I sit on an upside down bucket, which is awkward, but doable. I found that modern plastic barrels don't stay round when cut, so I get damaged bike wheels from the local Bike Shop and cut them to fit - they're *all* different, so some go outside, some go inside. I bolt them on with stainless #8 machine screws with fender washers against the plastic. If you can get barrels cheap or free, I'd be very tempted to burry them a little in soil and use them full height, just cutting out the bung end. Someone has a thread about doing that and they've worked out very well for him.

Hi grow some things in pots, but I tend to select plants that tolerate dry, hot temperature and don't become too large. I grow some hot peppers in pots and they do really well, as do my favorite shishito type pepper, Fushimi. I tried the larger  Bell Peppers, but they don't yield enough to be worth it.

I've grown Broccoli in pots, at least 24 inches wide and it worked well, but only for a single plant.

I use pots over my garden and at the ends of my raised beds to grow flowers and herbs that would otherwise be smothered by the plants in my beds.

My best advice on containers is to go as big as  you can, use fresh compost every year (I throw my soil in the compost bin and reuse in the spring: no waste!). I also use foliar fertilizer on anything hungry/large, about once a week. And I keep on top of the watering as they will dry fast, no matter  the size.

Here's a pic of a healthy pepper. It's loaded with fruits and is still doing well one month later, with regular feeding and picking.

Scott Stiller wrote:Have you ever tried to grow peppers in smaller pots? Specifically 2.5 quart pots? I’m wanting to try them because I’m nearly out of growing medium and refuse to buy any. I’m stubborn to a fault on this one.

If anything will thrive in a smaller pot, it's peppers. I just find that small pots are a nuisance because they dry out so fast. A larger pot with rotted wood in the bottom works better.