- 24 minutes ago
Think you need a full garden to grow fresh vegetables? This practical container gardening guide counts down 15 vegetables that often thrive in pots, with clear reasons why containers can beat a traditional garden bed for cleaner harvests, better drainage, warmer soil, and easier control.
From carrots and garlic to lettuce, radishes, peppers, mint, green onions, potatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, bush beans, spinach, strawberries, and basil, the video explains what each crop needs and why a balcony, patio, step, or sunny windowsill can be the perfect growing spot. It also covers watering, drainage, root space, shade, trellising, and how to keep plants healthier with less mess and fewer pests.
If you enjoy small space gardening, vegetable growing tips, urban gardening, patio gardening, balcony gardening, and practical home growing advice, this narrated guide is packed with useful ideas for beginners and experienced gardeners alike. Created for viewers searching for container vegetables, how to grow vegetables in pots, and the best vegetables for containers, this is a helpful watch for planning a productive kitchen garden in a limited space.
From carrots and garlic to lettuce, radishes, peppers, mint, green onions, potatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, bush beans, spinach, strawberries, and basil, the video explains what each crop needs and why a balcony, patio, step, or sunny windowsill can be the perfect growing spot. It also covers watering, drainage, root space, shade, trellising, and how to keep plants healthier with less mess and fewer pests.
If you enjoy small space gardening, vegetable growing tips, urban gardening, patio gardening, balcony gardening, and practical home growing advice, this narrated guide is packed with useful ideas for beginners and experienced gardeners alike. Created for viewers searching for container vegetables, how to grow vegetables in pots, and the best vegetables for containers, this is a helpful watch for planning a productive kitchen garden in a limited space.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I have farmed 110 acres my whole life, so believe me when I tell you this, you do not need
00:07a garden
00:07to grow vegetables. Some of the finest ones I have ever grown came out of a pot the size of
00:13a water
00:14bucket standing on a step in the sun, and a few of them grew better in that pot than they
00:20ever did
00:21in my field. Now hear me plain, I am not telling you a few pots will outfeed a whole garden.
00:28They will not, and you would catch me in it the first season. But I am telling you that for
00:34some
00:35vegetables a pot gives a cleaner crop, a healthier plant, and fewer of the troubles that eat a plant
00:42alive in open ground. That is the plain truth, and today I am going to count you down 15 of
00:49them,
00:50from 15 all the way to the one plant that so loves a pot that many a grower never puts
00:57it
00:57in the earth at all. The reason is not magic, it is control. In a pot you hand the plant
01:04three things
01:05open ground often cannot. Soil you made yourself. Water you give and hold back as the plant wants it,
01:14not as the sky decides. And a few inches of air between the plant and the slugs and fungus down
01:21in the dirt. My grandfather never owned a pot, but he understood the principle, for he built raised beds
01:29for the very same reason. Lift the good soil up, away from the bad, and keep it in your own
01:36hand.
01:37I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you
01:45want it,
01:45it is there. I will not mention it again. Let us begin, and I will count down.
01:52Number fifteen is the carrot. Now that will surprise you, for everyone pictures a carrot
01:58driving down deep into the field. But here is the trouble with field soil. It is full of stones and
02:05old roots and packed clay, and a carrot that meets a stone does not push it aside. It forks,
02:13or splits, or curls into a shape that would make a child laugh. That is why so many homegrown carrots
02:20come up crooked. A pot of loose, stone-free soil gives that root a clear road straight down. It comes
02:29up smooth and even, the way a carrot ought. And it comes up clean. You do not dig it with
02:37a fork and risk
02:38slicing it. You tip the pot and lift it free. Use a deep pot, a foot or better, and a
02:45short,
02:46stubby kind of carrot if your pot is shallow. The tiny seedlings also hate weeds crowding them early,
02:53and a pot has almost none. A straight, clean root at the end. The carrot does well in a pot.
03:01Number fourteen is garlic. Garlic's worst enemy is a wet foot. Soil that stays soggy through the cold
03:10months brings rot into the bulb and fungus onto the leaves, and a field low spot holds that water
03:17long after you wish it gone. A pot drains faster, and you hold the moisture in your own judgment.
03:25You plant the cloves in the fall, point up, water now and again, and leave them be through the winter
03:32while they work underground. In spring, green garlic to cut, and come summer, a bulb. And here is what a
03:41pot gives that my field cannot. On the night a hard freeze or a drowning rain is coming, you carry
03:49the
03:50whole pot under cover and set it back out when it passes. You cannot carry a field. Garlic in a
03:58pot.
03:59Number thirteen is lettuce. Lettuce has one great enemy, and it is heat. The sun warms open ground all
04:08day, and the lettuce feels it, and when lettuce gets too warm, it bolts. It shoots up a stalk, turns
04:16bitter
04:16as a green walnut, and the harvest is over. But a pot you can move. When the afternoon turns fierce,
04:24you slide it into the shade of the wall, and you have bought that plant weeks of sweet leaves it
04:31would
04:31not have had in the ground. Lettuce roots run shallow, so even a small pot feeds you well. Set it
04:39by the door,
04:39and cut a few outer leaves at a time, letting the plant grow on from the center. When it finishes,
04:47tip the old soil, freshen it, and sow again. No spade and no digging. Lettuce in a pot right by
04:56the door.
04:57Number twelve is the radish, and no vegetable pays you back faster. In loose pot soil, a radish swells quick
05:06and even, where hard ground gives you a small woody thing not worth the eating. A pot warms early in
05:15spring, and in three or four weeks you are pulling radishes. Nothing keeps a new gardener going like an
05:22early win. You pull them clean out of the soft mix, no digging, and even a shallow pot gives a
05:29good crop.
05:30Radish in a pot, and quick. Number eleven is peppers, and this one truly surprises folk. A pepper
05:38will often set more fruit in a pot than in the open field. The reason is that a pepper with
05:44endless room
05:45sometimes runs to leaf, all green and show and little fruit. A pot holds the roots in just enough,
05:54and the plant turns its strength to peppers instead of leaf. A pepper also loves warmth above most things,
06:02and a pot warms faster than cold spring ground, so you get earlier flowers and a heavier set,
06:10especially where the season runs cool. A medium pot does nicely, and come frost, you can carry a pepper
06:17to a sunny window and keep it alive through the winter. Peppers in a pot. Number ten is a plant
06:25you
06:25do not want to free, but to jail, and that is mint. Everyone frets about growing mint. No one should.
06:34The trouble is stopping it, for in open ground it runs underground on creeping roots and takes over the
06:42whole bed, choking out all near it. A pot is the answer. Give mint its own pot, and it can
06:49run all it
06:50likes and harm nothing. It grows fast, comes back strong after every cutting, and forgives you a week of
06:59neglect. Set it by the door for your tea and your lamb, and let it be. Mint belongs in a
07:06pot, every time,
07:08if you value the plants around it. Number nine is green onions, and few things
07:15suit a pot so well. Their roots are small, so you can set them close and thick, and a long
07:21trough of
07:22a planter holds dozens. Set it by the kitchen, and you snip what you need for the pan without a
07:29walk to
07:30the garden. And here is a thrift my grandmother would have loved. When you cut a store-bought green onion,
07:37keep the white root end, the inch with the little hairs on it, and push it down into the pot
07:44soil.
07:45It grows you a whole new green top. One onion gives and gives. Green onions in a pot from the
07:54very scraps
07:55off your board. Number eight is potatoes, and harvesting them from a pot is like digging for treasure with none
08:04of
08:04the labor. In the field, you dig with a fork and spear half of what you are after. From a
08:10deep tub or a
08:12grow bag, you tip the whole thing onto a sheet and pick the potatoes out clean with your fingers. Fresh
08:20pot
08:20soil carries fewer of the beetles and troubles that plague a field patch, and the good drainage of a bag
08:28keeps the tubers from rotting in a wet year. Use a deep tub, keep adding soil up the stem as
08:36it grows,
08:37and water it steady, for a crowded pot dries fast. Potatoes in a tub. Number seven is cucumbers. A cucumber
08:47in the open ground sprawls flat in the damp, and the leaves never dry, and that is the very cradle
08:55of
08:55mildew. Stand it up instead. Set a cucumber in a pot with a small trellis and let it climb, and
09:04the air
09:04moves all through it. Dry leaves, healthy plant. The fruit hangs in plain sight where you can cut it,
09:13instead of hiding fat and yellow under the leaves. And it hangs clean off the wet soil that rots a
09:21ground-grown cucumber. Pick a bush kind for a pot, and it will give you more than one plant has
09:28a right
09:28to. Cucumbers up a trellis in a pot. Number six is eggplant, and the eggplant lives for warm soil. It
09:39is
09:39slow to start in cold spring ground, but a pot heats up fast, and that warm root gives you quicker
09:47growth
09:47and earlier fruit. It wants full sun and good drainage, and a pot hands you both. And it is a
09:55handsome plant, purple flowers and glossy fruit, so your pot earns its keep for the eye as well as the
10:03plate. Once it is settled in, it bears through the heat of summer, harvest after harvest. Eggplant in a warm
10:12pot.
10:14Number five is cherry tomatoes. Folk wrestle with the big slicing tomato in a pot and decide tomatoes
10:22are no good for it. But the little cherry kind changes the whole story, and often does better in a
10:29pot
10:30than in the ground. A pot gives better drainage and better air around the leaves, and that matters
10:36greatly, for the tomato is quick to take a fungus in damp, crowded air. The small fruit asks less of
10:44the plant than a great beefsteak, so it keeps setting tomatoes by the hundred all season. Now mind this
10:52one thing. A potted tomato must be watered even and steady, never bone dry then flooded, for that
11:01swinging is what cracks the skin and brings the black sunken spot on the bottom end. That spot is
11:09not a shortage of lime in your soil, the way folks say. It is uneven water. Keep the pot steady
11:17and give it a
11:18steak or a cage, and a single cherry plant will feed you off a patio all summer. Cherry tomatoes in
11:27a pot.
11:28Number four is bush beans. The bush bean is easy in the ground and easier still in a pot, for
11:36it stays
11:37low and tidy and wants no tall poles or strings. It only grows into a neat little plant that fills
11:46a pot with
11:46flowers and then with pods. It likes warm soil to start, and a pot gives it that warmth early, so
11:55you are
11:55picking sooner. The pods hang up off the soil, clean and easy to find, where ground beans tangle down in
12:04the
12:04mud after a rain. Even a middling pot, because the beans grow in a thick cluster, will give you more
12:11meals
12:12than you would guess. Bush beans in a pot. Number three is spinach, and like its cousin the lettuce,
12:21its enemy is heat. Warm weather makes spinach bolt and turn bitter, and the picking is done. But you can
12:30carry the pot into afternoon shade, and stretch that harvest for weeks past when the ground crop would
12:38have quit. Spinach wants steady water, but hates a soggy root, and a good pot of proper soil holds that
12:47balance far better than the moods of field dirt. The roots are shallow, so a modest pot does nicely,
12:55and when one sowing is spent, you freshen the soil and sow again. Spinach in a pot moved to the
13:04shade
13:05when the sun turns cruel. Number two is strawberries, and once a body grows strawberries in a pot they are
13:14slow to go back to the ground. Think of all the ground steals from a strawberry. Slugs chew the fruit.
13:23Rain
13:24splashes mud up onto the berries. The berry sits on wet soil and rots on its underside before you ever
13:32taste
13:33it. Lift it into a pot or a hanging basket, and every one of those troubles falls away at once.
13:41The berries
13:42hang clean in the air, out of reach of much that would get to them first, and up where you
13:49pick them
13:50without bending your back. A pot also pens in the runners that would sprawl across a whole bed. A few
13:59good pots of strawberries give an astonishing weight of fruit for the little room they take. Strawberries in
14:07a pot, up where you can reach them. And number one, the crown, is basil. If ever a plant was
14:17made for a pot,
14:18it is this one. Basil wants warm roots, sharp drainage, and air moving around it, and a pot gives
14:27all three better than the ground can. Field soil holds too much water around the basil's feet after a
14:35rain, and basil hates a wet foot worse than almost anything, taking stress and disease from it fast.
14:44A pot drains clean and warms quick, and warm, happy basil grows like a weed. Set it by the kitchen,
14:54and the more you pinch it for your sauce and your bread, the bushier and fuller it grows. One good
15:02plant in one good pot gives fresh basil for months on end. That is why it takes the top of
15:11my list.
15:12Basil in a pot by the door. Now there is a memory this list brings back. My grandmother kept a
15:22row of
15:22clay pots on the sill of the summer kitchen, herbs and a little pepper and her green onions, the window
15:30facing south to catch the whole afternoon. She had the garden too, acres of it, but those pots were the
15:39ones she tended with her own hands as she cooked, snipping while she worked. I asked her once why
15:47she bothered with pots when she had all that ground. She wiped her hands on her apron and said,
15:55A sunny sill is a garden to them that knows it. I did not understand her for years. I understand
16:04her
16:04now. She was not making do. She was growing the finest herbs on the place, in the warm,
16:12clean soil she could reach without setting down her spoon. So let me say plainly who gains by you
16:18believing you need land. The grocer gains who sells you a clam shell of basil for the price of a
16:25whole
16:25plant. It is not that anyone schemed to keep you buying. It is worse than that. It is a whole
16:32habit of
16:33mind, handed down, that says growing your own food wants a garden, when much of it only wants a few
16:40good pots and a spot of sun. No one has to coordinate it. It rolls on by itself, season after
16:47season,
16:48until a body sets it down. Here is what I want to know from you. What is the smallest space
16:55you have
16:55grown food in? A balcony rail? A fire escape? A single pot on a city sill? Tell me in the
17:03comments,
17:04and tell me as well whether you own your place or rent it, for the renters among you have the
17:09most to
17:10gain from a garden you can pick up and carry with you when you go. Next time I will give
17:16you the second
17:16part of this list, the vegetables you may not have thought could live in a pot at all, and the
17:22few mistakes
17:23that kill a potted plant faster than anything. But for now, go look again at that balcony, that step,
17:30that sunny corner you walked past all summer. You do not need acres. The people who built this country
17:37with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.