I have so many questions. I love to garden and always have some kind of plants growing. This year however I'm trying something new.....container garening. We moved into an apartment and we don't have anywhere to plant anything. Needless to say I built a few raised mobile containers and bought toy tubs as well as using some storage totes. I have invested in an insane amount of bags of topsoil, manure, potting soil, garden soil, and peat Moss which I've used to fill them all with. I also have bought a few different kinds of fertilizer as well as a ph and soil tester and a soil test kit. I have started some plants indoors in a small greenhouse and invested in a heat lamp and a couple grow lights. I have also ordered some things from gurney and burpees and in fact some of my orders have already started arriving. My plant list includes the following (seeds I started indoors and are all now 6 inches tall).....3 big boy tomato .....6 in total of 2 kinds of peppers which are sweet baNana and a bell pepper color
mix.....2 kinds of onion, red candy and walla walla sweet......2 kinds of carrots (not planted yet), little fingers and a Caracas hybrid both of which don't get larger than about 3 inches long.....6 broccoli which I have planted outside already in 2 different tubs...... 3 stonehead cabbage.....3 red ball brussell sprouts......3 sweet n early cantaloupe....4 big n tastey seedless watermelon......4 pickling bush pickle hybrid cucumber.....early contender bush beans (not yet planted) .....AND ARRIVING IN 1YEAR BARE ROOTS OR PLANTS ARE ......2 DWARF TOHATSU BLUEBERRY PLANTS.....10 WHOPPER JUNEBEARING STRAWBERRY ROOTS.....10 MARA DES BOISE EVERBEARING STRAWBERRY ROOTS....1 25 TRIBUTE STRAWBERRY BARE ROOTS.....1 ALPINE FRAGILE STRAWBERRY PLANT ....1 CELESTE FIG TREE .....1 HERITAGE RASPBERRY PLANT.....5 JOAN J RASPBERRY BARE ROOTS......5 TRIPLE CROWN BLACKBERRY BARE ROOTS......and 2 kinds of asparagus I took to my girlfriends house and planted all 20 roots.

LOL.....SO MY QUESTION IS......WHAT SIZE CONTAINERS DO THEY ALL NEED AND HOW MANY CAN BE PLANTED TOGETHER AND WITH WHAT ETC. ATTACHED IS A LIST OF THE CONTAINER SIZES I HAVE EVER TO USE. I WILL ALSO SEND A PICTURE OF THE AREA I'M WORKING WITH.

I HOPE YOU CAN HELP ME. I have donever my homework and looked all this up but most are not specific to my needs and or say conflicting things.

Thank you,
Lisa

Hi Lisa. Welcome to ATP.

First, can you update your info and tell us where you are? We won't be of much help without that information.

I hope your deck is BIG! Thats a lot of stuff. Use at least 10 or 15 gallon containers, the bigger the better. Containers are fun because you can over-plant them. You are controlling the nutrients and the water supply and there is no chance of those things leaching out into the rest of the garden. This only works for plants that are annual. Some of your plants will be with you for years.

Also, the containers need to be insulated against the summer heat. Plants don't like their roots warm; that's the fastest way to kill them.

I can't help you with the soil as I don't know the proportions you used. But I would have suggested you buy potting soil and 1 bag of manure and skipped all the rest. Garden soil is made to be mixed with the native soil. Potting soil doesn't need amending; its complete. So the topsoil, garden soil, and peat Moss aren't needed and may just be so over the top that everything you plant will instantly burn.

Use manure in moderation on cucumbers, melons and squash. The tomatoes and peppers may never set fruit if they have too much.

Asperagus won't produce an edible crop for several years. The blueberries and fig tree are permanent crops so will need pots to themselves. The strawberries will have to be re-potted every spring as the plants only produce for a year (two at the most). The original plants are discarded and the offsets planted.

Daisy

Hi Lisa, and welcome to ATP. As Daisy said, you have a lot of plants ordered, and I sure hope you have enough space and enough sun for all of them.

As Daisy also said, we need to know where you are to give you much advice - at least city, state and country if you are not in the US. This gives us an indication of how hot your summer temps will get, your relative humidity, and how strong your sun is. eg. Pac. Northwest growing is completely different than high desert, plains or the Southeast.

Glad to hear you planted the asparagus at your friend's house. It's not a crop for containers, but as long as your girlfriend stays where she's at for some years to come, you'll get your reward, and so will she, of course. Lotsa water in the spring, and feed it. Plus don't pick any the first year.

If you'd asked us before you bought all your containers and all that topsoil, manure, garden soil and peat moss, my personal preference for growing veggies in containers is to use Earth Boxes. They are a wonderful, self-contained unit that is extremely water-efficient and once you set them up, all you need to do is keep them watered, and enjoy! They even come with casters so you can move them easily. But you must use only potting mix in them, none of your other soils or amendments.

Btw, do you have a hose bib or other handy water source near your deck? Your're gonna need it! Will your deck leak onto the deck of the apartment underneath you? That's always a headache - I started out gardening on a 3rd floor balcony in Vancouver BC. My neighbors underneath got lots of gifts of veggies for putting up with all the dripping from my garden.

Welcome to All Things Plants, @Mominlove3 !

LOL, you have really jumped into the container gardening with both feet -- that's a lot of different plants to experiment with, all at the same time. I agree that we need more info about your location -- but in general I would say some of the things will work out, some won't ... just like any new garden project. I'm also not sure what you meant by "attached is a list of the container sizes" ??

Most of the plants you've listed I have no experience with, as far as growing in containers; but peppers in particular seem to do very well grown that way (as do eggplant). I do have half a dozen blueberry plants in big pots that are doing better than they did in the ground here; keep in mind that they need a rather acidic soil to thrive.

I hope we can be of more help once we know your gardening location!

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for writing me back. I live in Twin Falls idaho. Well tomorrow I will take a pic of the area I have to work with and then you can see my containers and all. I live downstairs so nobody I'd underneath and this area is right next to the hose faucet. My back porch is mostly shaded only getting sun half the day so I could rotate the cool weather plants back there if need be. I hope you received the list I sent as an attachment of the sizes of containers I have to use. As for my perennials I put them in the containers I built out of wood so I can keep them for years to come. So what I need to know most is what to plant together in my 15 gallon tubs and I have a few 45 gallon tubs as well.

You'll need to post your list of pot sizes. Be nice if you could post photos of them, too.

You want to group your plants according to their water/ fertilizer needs, so for example, I would put all the tomatoes (were there 3 ?) in one 15gal. if it is deep enough. They will have to be kept at the north side of your area so they won't shade the other shorter plants. When they're big and have fruit in August you're going to be watering them twice a day, at least!

You could put all your peppers in one of the 45gal. tubs as they'll all be about the same height, and water/fert need.

The cool-season stuff like carrots and cabbage-y stuff can be grouped in one tub, but be sure the carrots get enough light. When I grew them in Salt Lake City, the season was sometimes very short for cool-season veggies. (it got warm too quickly, and they were tough and not tasty) You may be harvesting those at the beginning of the summer, and then have room for more warm weather stuff like your beans.

Beans need to be planted in successive plantings eg. every few weeks plant a few more until about July. This way you won't have a huge harvest all at once.

Just my opinion, but I feel you're going to want to plant your raspberries and blackberries at your girlfriend's house along with the asparagus because they get big and tall and they want to spread. In fact, you can "intercrop" those, and just let the asparagus ferns grow up amongst the berry bushes.

You really should have rented a house, Lisa but I sure admire your ambitions!

Thank you so much for the help with my plants. Yes you're right, we should've and would've rented a house but we were trying get to save money because we thought we were moving to horseshoe bend and building our own home but plans have changed and now we're staying. It took me over a year to find the place were in now. Well I will send a pic tomorrow. Thanks again.