A half barrel is much larger. It takes 1.5 - 50qt bags of potting soil to fill my barrels. That's almost 19 gallons of soil. So, I can plant 4 times as many plants in my barrel as you are planting in your 5 gallon bucket. As I treat them as annuals, I can crowd them more and not worry about production. Did you look at my photo?
I use Miracle Gro potting soil and fertilize with Dynamite 10-10-10 half way through summer (in case that's the next question).
