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pegleg48

Container sizes

pegleg48
11 years ago

Hi all

This will be my 3rd year container gardening, and the first that I'm trying to get big enough containers for my veggies.

I know you need at least 5 gallons to grow just about anything bigger than lettuce, but my problem is: how can you tell how may gallons a container is?

Most planters/containers give you sizes in inches (if at all) and not gallons (or Litres, in Canada-land).

If a standard bucket (the kind you get at the hardware store/leftover from food storage) is 5 gallons, whats a good example of 10? 25?

I got a couple big planters, but have no idea how much they will actually hold.

Photos of examples would be great.

Or, should I dig out the measuring tape and do some basic math?

Thanks

Peg

Comments (6)

  • Nunyabiz1
    11 years ago

    You could take what you know is a 5 gallon container and pour water from it into the larger ones.
    The ones I have hold about 60 quarts of soil to the brim, I use a whole 55 quart bag in each pot.
    That makes them about 15 gallons each.

    To me I think right around 15 gallons is perfect, plenty big for a good root system but not so big as to be impossible to move.

    I have 5, 15 gallon pots and one 95 gallon "Vegtrug" on my deck.

  • dickiefickle
    11 years ago

    Check out a chart

    Here is a link that might be useful: Litres to gallons /gal to litres

  • pegleg48
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Yeah, I've more or less guess-timated how big my containers are. I've been using 30L bags of soil, which us apx 8 gallons, so my big pots are a bit bigger than that (probably about 10-12, one of them might be 15.) In any case, if my tomatoes don't get as huge as they could be, I'm not going to make a fuss as long as they produce something.
    Garden is more or less established (after a long afternoon of work).
    Thanks
    Peg

  • sutremaine
    11 years ago

    Assuming the pot is straight-sided, I think you could average out the distances across the top and bottom of the pot and then calculate the pot volume as though it were a cylinder of the averaged width. Alter as appropriate for pots that are different shapes.

    It's probably easier to just do the maths, since your photographed examples will need to be checked against what you have available anyway. Heck, there are probably tables somewhere on the internet that give volumes for certain pot sizes.

  • Athenian
    11 years ago

    Here's a handy calculator

    Here is a link that might be useful: Volume Calculator

  • crystals1943
    11 years ago

    Here's a great site.

    Hope it helps.

    Tony

    Here is a link that might be useful: Online Conversion Chart