Not having the land to do a traditional garden shouldn’t stop you from enjoying beautiful, fresh produce. Starting a container garden is a great way to get many of the benefits of a garden without the space requirements. There is really a lot you can do with just a few pots and a sunny balcony, porch, or window.
For our family, the next few months have a lot of uncertainty about where we will be living. It might still be with my parents, or in an apartment, or in our own home. I am so excited to get our own home, but I don’t want to miss out on this year’s gardening season waiting to see if it will happen. So the plan this year is to make a mobile, container garden that can move along with us wherever we go. The assumption I am making is that we will have enough room for 2 large pots, 4 medium pots, and 3 small pots. Given our previous apartment experience, this should be doable with a small porch or balcony.
* We participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. When you click on and/or make a purchase through an affiliate link on our website, we may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. You can read our full disclosure here*
What we are planting
The plan at the moment is to try out a few things that we would plant more of next year if we have a traditional garden. But we also have to keep in mind what kinds of things work well in containers and what don’t. So even though I want to try out companion planting the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) I know that that will have to wait for another year when we can have a traditional garden. Here is what we have decided on for our 2023 container garden.
In the large pots
We are planting one normal tomato plant and one sweet cherry tomato plant in each of the large pots. This should supply us with some beautiful tomatoes to eat fresh or use in recipes throughout the summer even though it will not be enough to can any. My husband absolutely LOVES eating fresh tomatoes so he is pretty excited for this. The specific varieties we decided on are Marglobe for normal tomatoes and Isis Candy for sweet cherry tomatoes. Both of these kinds are heirloom which is a priority for us as we would like to collect seeds year to year.
In the medium pots
Along with our tomatoes, we also love to have fresh peppers. So we are trying out one each of three different kinds this year. One Big Red Bell Pepper, one Sunset Italian sweet pepper, and one Cayenne pepper to add the heat. These will be planted in 3 out of the 4 of the medium pots.
For the 4th, we are going to do a strawberry pot. I am still looking for the right pot but am hopeful to find it soon. For the plants, I chose Ozark Beauty strawberries because of their size, hardiness, and length of production. It wasn’t a priority for the strawberry plants to be an heirloom variety because they propagate themselves if we ever want to have more of them.
In the small pots
The small pots are for our favorite and most used herbs. These are basil, cilantro, and rosemary. There is really nothing like having fresh herbs to use when cooking and I feel like the freshness of basil and cilantro is especially important. And rosemary is just my favorite herb so I use it a lot.
Where we got our seeds / plants
This year I wanted to try out starting some plants from seed. And since I am only doing a few plants, this has been super easy. The only ones that I bought as plants were the strawberries. This is just because I wanted quite a few strawberry plants and want them to produce this year. I bought the strawberry plants from my local greenhouse, The GreenHouse. I got my seeds from True Leaf Market and would highly recommend them. Their germination rate has been great and they are a good, reputable company for seeds.
Our seed starting experience
I have started all of the tomato and pepper plants inside already and they are growing great! I planted 2-3 seeds per hole for each of these and have had all but 2 seeds sprout so I am very happy with the results. Our setup has been as simple as possible. I used a small glass terrarium to start these seeds inside then will harden them off and transfer them outside when they get a little bigger.
I am so excited for our container garden this year. It will be the perfect way for our family to enjoy fresh produce throughout the summer no matter where we live. I hope that this gives you inspiration and ideas to start your own container garden!
