In a 5-gallon bucket you can grow: • 1 tomato, pepper or zucchini, or • 3-4 lettuce, or • 1 cabbage or broccoli (with 15 radishes or 8 spinach), or • 15 carrots or beets, or • 6 bulbing onions, garlic or leeks, or • 8 mustards or turnips for greens.
Just about anything will go in 5 gallons, except large vegetables. Tomatoes will not do well, and squash, cucumber, melon and watermelon are out. Eggplant, peppers, summer greens such as amaranth or malabar spinach, and okra, given your situation and time of year, are probably OK.
Single Planting: Planting one tomato plant per 5-gallon bucket is typically the simplest method. This ensures plants have enough space and nutrients to grow and are easier to manage. Double Planting: If you wish to increase yield in limited space, consider planting two tomato plants per 5-gallon bucket.
We like to use 5-7 gallon pots for peppers, as we find that too small of a pot, they dry out too quickly and hinder the growth. Some people plant up to 3 plants per five gallon bucket, but we've found that they won't do as well as if each one had their own bucket. The bigger the pot the better the yield!
Planting several plants in one pot might seem like a good idea, but it usually is counterproductive. 2 Unless the pot is tremendous in size (like the size of a raised bed), plant only one tomato plant per pot.
I put one pepper plant per five gallon bucket. You could put 30 plants in, but each one will be 30 times smaller and 30 times less productive.
Drill a large hole that will fit PVC piping in one bucket. The upper bucket will contain soil and plants. The lower bucket will contain water, the PVC end and a wicking item such as cloth. This will slowly deliver water up to the plant's roots.
In a 5-gallon bucket you can grow: • 1 tomato, pepper or zucchini, or • 3-4 lettuce, or • 1 cabbage or broccoli (with 15 radishes or 8 spinach), or • 15 carrots or beets, or • 6 bulbing onions, garlic or leeks, or • 8 mustards or turnips for greens.
If you're planning a 12-inch deep raised bed, you'll need approximately 24 cubic feet of soil to fill a 4x8 bed. A depth of 18 inches will require approximately 36 cubic feet of soil. The type of soil you use will also affect the volume required to fill your raised bed.
Planting tomatoes in 5-gallon buckets is a great option if you don't have much garden space. Begin by making at least a dozen holes in the bottom of the bucket so that water can drain easily. You can use a drill with a 3/8” bit, or a hammer and nail.
If it looks and feels dry, I water. Early in the season when my tomato plants are young I find that I need to water a couple of times a week. Once the plants have matured and begin to flower and fruit, my container-grown tomatoes are irrigated almost daily and garden tomatoes are deep watered once a week.
Get Started Growing Edibles
Begin with a large planter, at least 15 inches deep and wide. Make sure it has drainage holes. 5-gallon Homer buckets can be used to grow some edibles like tomatoes and peppers.
Two or three plants will fit in a five-gallon bucket or grow one cucumber in a 10-inch-wide container. Mix soil with equal parts of compost, potting soil, perlite and peat moss. The compost or rotted manure will get plants off to a good start, or blend in granules of a balanced fertilizer, such as 10-10-10.
However, determinate, dwarf and compact vegetable varieties often work best. Vegetables like arugula, kale, lettuce and spinach work well in containers because they are easy to seed, can be harvested frequently, and can be replanted throughout the season.
A 5 gallon plastic plant container (5#) has a volume of approximately 887.7 cubic inches. Being that you don't completely fill that volume when planting, you could fill about 2 containers with a 1.5 cubic foot bag of soil.
A 5-gallon bucket, such as this bucket on Amazon, tends to be 14-16 inches tall and can hold around 40 pounds of soil. This can be large enough to hold one zucchini plant.
Never use buckets that previously housed chemicals, paint, or other unsavory or unknown materials near edible plants. Instead, use buckets made of food-safe plastic and clean them out thoroughly before planting. Standard 5-gallon buckets can hold about 2 potato plants, while 10-gallon buckets can hold 4 potato plants.
Avoid containers that might contain toxic substances, e.g., treated wood or plastic buckets that may have stored chemicals. Satisfactory containers include plastic or fiber nursery pots; wooden bushel baskets; plastic, metal or wooden buckets; milk cartons - even plastic bags and recycled cardboard boxes.
Plants are happy and in need of water every 3 days. For 5 gallons, try 4 liters of water. If you want some runoff then maybe 5 or 6 liters. Depends on how you apply the water too.
Bigger containers and fewer plants are more forgiving when it comes to those two issues. If the answer to the question above is yes, you can grow 2 pepper successfully in a single 5 gallon container. The key is to have a back up water reserve in some capacity just in case you miss a scheduled watering.
It's fine to use a smaller container, like a 5-gallon bucket or 10-gallon container, but for best results, stick with the smaller patio- or bush-type tomatoes (such as Better Bush, Bush Goliath, or Patio). Know, too, that tomatoes in smaller pots require more watering and feeding.
5 gallon buckets are terrific for growing vegetables and herbs of many kinds. Not only do the buckets hold the perfect amount of soil for roots to thrive, but they also take up minimal room, so they don't crowd a patio or deck. One 5 gallon bucket can be home to one vegetable plant or two, or three small herbs.