I'm afraid I don't have an answer, Ellen, but I am planning to do some more informal container gardening with greens and some other veggies.

Below is a related (sort of) article from the NYT on Friday.

Cheers,
Nora Belle

Here is a link that might be useful: Cheap, Green, Easy

Two chards and a broccoli will get quite snug in a 5 gallon bucket but if you have limited buckets I'd let them fight it out. Any one of the plants will fill a five gallon bucket if you give it a chance so if one seedling gets particularly pushy they might try to squeeze out the neighbors.

But if you'd be equally happy with 2 chards + 1 broc as you would with one super chard or one super broc, then I'd say go for it. If not, put your broc in the five gallon and do chards in one gallon nursery pots. (One per pot.) You'll stunt their growth but then again you'd be harvesting plenty of tasty baby chard until they finally get totally root bound.

I think 5 gallon buckets and tire gardens are the ultimate containers, but before our compost heap was mature we did a lot of growing in one gallon nursery pots. (We bought them in bulk from Greenhouse Megastore online.) Even tomatoes will grow "good enough" in gallon pots with Walmart potting mix as long as you stay on top of the watering. In really hot weather that can mean twice a day.

2 or 2.5 gallon nursery pots are also nice. The 2.5 ones would be plenty roomy for a broccoli or a nice big chard.

Five gallon buckets are fantastic if you've got a good supply of compost. If you've got to rely on commercial potting mixes you can really do a lot by mixing in some smaller containers as well. Your plants might not get as burly but if you make up for that with a few extra plants your dinner table won't know the difference. :)

Lynda

great info.
thanks.
I'm really into this new kind of gardening.
it's not as hard to do as I thot it would be.

My driveway -where the 5-gallon buckets live- has all sorts of advantages over the community garden -
#1 -It's here! no driving
#2 - And altho I am going to protect from critters, there aren't a whole forest-full of critters here as there are in the comm'y garden.
#3- Best of all -
My bathroom is close by. lol

ellen

Another advantage of growing in buckets is that if you get one plant with pests or a disease you can move them well away from the others.

We really liked the buckets for our costata romanesco summer squash. It is a huge burly plant that will take over a regular garden, but it doesn't produce a huge amount of squashes. The taste is so good, though, that they are really worth growing. We can grow a lot more of them in buckets than we could in an in-ground bed and we can space them for good air circulation.

Lynda

I'm new to this gardening in pots, can anyone advise me how to save strawbarry plants over the winter that are in pots?

I am new to gardening and plan on doing 12 different veggies. I started several plants indoors in sets of 4 each. Not thinking I bought 12 nursery pots online. Now I realized I needed 12x4 or almost 50 5 gallon pots. I was planning on putting them on my deck, but know 50 pots plus half of them are vinning plant so that wouldn't work. Where could I put them?

I am new to gardening and have planted cucumber, celery, melon, watermelon, tomatoes, hot and green peppers indoors. its been three weeks and they are all thriving well. I just put my plants under a light a week ago and they have doubled in size. Half my plants are ready for bigger pots. I can not put them outdoors until the first week of June. I was wondering if I could put them in there 5 gallon containers now and keep them indoors until ready to put outside? Am I doing everything right so far?

"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli."

George H. W. Bush