- 1). Select the types of vegetables you want to plant. Choose varieties that are suitable for containers. For example, if you want a lot of tomatoes, choose bush varieties that you can grow in a large bucket or cherry or Roma tomatoes that can grow from a hanging planter.
- 2). Gather your containers. You don't have to buy a bunch of containers. Find suitable household items, drill drainage holes in the bottoms, and use them as planters. Buckets and barrels can work, as well. Use a barrel for tomatoes, a hot pepper plant and basil.
- 3). Plant containers full of small vine vegetables like tomatoes, gherkin-size cucumbers, peppers or herbs, and hang them from a wall or fence. You may have to buy these containers, as they need to have one flat side to fit against the wall or fence. They should also be small, as the soil will be heavy, especially when it's wet. Alternatively, put a planter on the ground, fill it with soil and seeds, and let the plants grow up the fence. This strategy will probably not work on a wall.
- 4). Build a long box-like container, or find a traditional window planter and fill it with lettuce and greens.
- 5). Build a raised bed to the size that meets your needs, and engage in square-foot gardening. Block off 1-foot squares, and put different plants in each square. You can grow a variety of plants this way.
- 6). Plant different vegetables throughout the season. Succession planting is popular, even among large-scale farmers. Simply use the space where one plant has been harvested for another plant. For example, if you planted lettuce early in the season in your window box, use the same space for tomato or pepper plants. Then, as the weather cools down, harvest your tomatoes and plant more lettuce in the box.
- 7). Look around for underused spaces. Some urban gardeners get very creative, putting ladders up and then hanging pots full of vegetables from them, replacing flower beds with vegetable gardens and even planting tomatoes and peppers in containers on windowsills inside.
previous post