What exactly is bucket garden? It’s as easy as it sounds: bucket gardening is growing your favorite plants in large buckets. This style is a special subset of container gardening, which means that it usually uses 5-gallon buckets made specifically for growing plants. They’re also sometimes referred to as “pot gardens,” since the pots are often shaped in this way.
If you’re familiar with container gardening – growing your favorite plants in pots – then you’re halfway home in developing a bucket garden! It’s the same concept as traditional container gardening: plant the desired vegetables or fruits in the proper area, add them into a large bucket, water them regularly (but not too much), and you’ve got an instant food source. The difference is that this method creates a food source that’s readily available and keeps growing. You can add new plants fairly easily, since the roots of the transplants will spread into the soil. You can also move the plants around quite easily, if you get in the habit of rotating them every few weeks.
If you live in a small apartment or a very small house, or even a narrow yard, container gardening may be an appealing option for you. For example, if you have limited space and limited sunlight, then you may have to consider growing other plants besides the ones you want to grow. However, if you have a larger yard and plenty of sunshine, then you can simply use buckets and grow all your vegetables – root or leaf – in those.
Another advantage of using a bucket garden is the fact that you don’t have to worry about weeds. Weeds can be a major hassle when you have to go digging around them, or try to get them to eat the vegetables you want to eat. With a bucket garden, weeds are gone, and you can spend your time enjoying your garden instead of fighting them.
If you have trouble finding and keeping insects, bugs and rodents, then you should consider container gardening. With a container garden, you can have many types of small pests that you can use to control the pests in your garden. For example, there are lady beetles that you can put in your garden to control the population of aphids on your plant beds. Another great option is the red spider, which is a natural pest deterrent.
You don’t have to limit your container garden to just fruits and vegetables, either. Berries and melons, as well as sweet potatoes, pumpkins and squash are all great choices for container gardens. A little care is required when planting berries and sweet potatoes, since they tend to have a sharp shape. Also, you’ll need to make sure the soil is well rotted before putting any of these plants in the ground. If it isn’t, you can break up the plant a bit by hand, but you can also use a spoon to take away some of the excess soil.
When it comes to planting tomatoes, you can either plant them in the garden attached to a fence or hang them upside down from hooks. To plant pole plants, such as clematis and liatris, you’ll need to buy long wooden skewers that come in different sizes. Drill holes into the ground as you do with your tomatoes, ensuring that the drilled hole is just slightly larger than the actual plant you’re going to place. Then you can use the screws in the skewers to keep the plants upright.
A final option for container gardening is using baskets instead of buckets, which are easier to clean and maintain. Baskets are a great way to get good quality fresh produce throughout the year. One of the best aspects of using baskets is that you can move them around if you need to (I usually only keep one basket on my porch). There are different types of baskets that you can purchase, including those made of metal or canvas. They vary in price, but most people find that they are well worth the extra investment – you can always purchase more baskets as needed when you have more plants.