Advanced Container Gardening Techniques & Methods

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If you’ve spent any time around our content or social media, one of the things you know is that we heavily utilize container gardening in our northern growing efforts.

The primary reason behind this is that containers allow very rapid soil warming in our extreme northern climate.  We’ve come to the conclusion that this is as important, if not more so, than warmer ambient air temperatures.

As such, we have many articles here that discuss the basics, our methods and various topics around container gardening.

Over the decades of growing food in containers, however, we’ve come to a number of more advanced solutions and methods that help solve some of the underlying issues with growing plants in containers.

This article will focus more on these more advanced topics when it comes to growing food in containers.

Develop A Thorough Nutritional Strategy

In the same vein as water access, the same factors also work to limit the nutritional uptake by plants within the container garden.

When the soil becomes exhausted of nutrients, the plant can’t simply grow more roots to get more food.

What this means is that the nutritional strategy used on the container garden is important.  It’s usually not enough to add a bit of compost and call it a season.

In our container gardening practices, we’ve determined that the use of fertilizers is absolutely critical.  While we have our opinions on organic vs. inorganic nutrition, the debate doesn’t functionally matter for this purpose.

This is also one of the reasons why we’ve heavily favored water soluble fertilizers.  Reapplication of the fertilizer is much easier, whereas granular fertilizers require top dressing and natural drainage into the root structure.

Furthermore, what we have found to work well is the continual application of these fertilizers.  Single application fertilizers will have a tendency towards certain nutrients being used heavily, while others go less used.

The uptake of nutrients by the plants is outside the control of the grower, so an imbalance of NPK and micronutrients is inevitable.  We’d argue having too much of something  is a better outcome than occasional droughts of critical nutrition.

The grower can solve this through regular applications of fertilizer, typically based around the manufacturer’s application rates.  So, as an example, if the plant draws down the supply of nitrogen, it will be readily replenished.

When you develop solid, continual nutritional strategies, the container garden can truly excel.  Plants have what they need, when they need it.

Supplement Beneficial Bacteria

One of the things that has become much more profound to us as long term container gardeners is the “containment” aspect of container gardening.

As we thought about this more and more, the potential impacts of soil isolation are immense.  An important example of this is beneficial bacteria and the general microbial health of the soil.

Given that container garden soil is isolated, the introduction and replenishment of beneficial bacteria and microbes is virtually non-existent.  Those bacteria aren’t climbing the wall of your container and diving in!

One of the methods the grower can employ improved microbial health is by focusing on mycorrhizae.  You can introduce this into your soil through potting soils, but there are also soil based supplements that add it as well.

We also practice supplementation of other soil bacteria, particularly through commercially available products like Bacillus amyloliquefaciens.  This bacteria is introduced through either watering or during the application of water soluble fertilizers.

This is a beneficial bacteria in your soil all ready.  It’s naturally occurring.  We’re simply talking about increasing their numbers within the container garden’s isolated environment.

If one does a deep dive into Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, you’ll find it’s almost a “wonder bug.”  It works to prevent disease, acts as a plant growth stimulant, it improves plant stress response and can inhibit soil pathogens.

While it’s likely impossible to fully simulate supplementation of all natural bacteria, there are many benefits to supplementing some.

The gardener is working with natural processes, but that gardener can also aid those natural processes to be more thorough and effective.

Understand Your Plant’s Root Structures

When it comes to in-ground gardening, the grower often has no clue of what the plant’s root structure looks like or how large it is.

There are “rough” guidelines, such as the plant’s roots being approximately the same size and depth as the plant is wide and tall.  But, that’s not universal.

One of the advantages the container gardener has is the ability to inspect the plant’s roots upon plant removal.  This allows the inspection of soil utilization and compaction of those roots.

An optimal container grown plant will completely consume the soil it is given.  This allows the plant maximum access to water, nutrition and growth potential.

Knowledge of this topic can also help form perspective on plant counts, as discussed above.

When you understand how a tomato grows, you understand why only one tomato should be grown in each container.  You also understand why a given container might support 6 to 8 bush beans.

Some species will simply root lightly.  So, complete consumption of the soil isn’t “always” the goal.

If you observe extreme root compaction, this tells the grower a few things.  For example, the plant will need heavier amounts of water.  It will also need heavier levels of nutrition.  It will also likely benefit from more soil.

Whereas if you observe light rooting, this is telling you that less water and less nutrition will likely be needed.  It might also tell the grower that there’s room to grow more plants in that same soil.

Develop A Cost-Of-Operation And Usage Strategy

There’s little doubt that container gardens can be slightly expensive to get into.  Between the container cost, irrigation costs and especially the setup/teardown labor involved with a container garden.

For us, that implies that a given crop has to be “worth” growing in this more expensive growing method.

Getting value out of a container garden means utilizing its benefits to the maximum extent possible.  The plant(s) grown with the method should benefit the most from that method.

Certainly, almost any crop can be grown in containers.  The real question is, should it?

Examples of our container utilization strategies?

• High value fruits (like tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers) benefit from soil warmth
• Herbs are high value, moderately benefitting from soil warmth
• Corn highly benefits from warmer soils, aiding in maturity, earlier tassle/silk production and thus, more complete pollination
• Beans highly benefit from warmer soil temperatures, therefore the container garden increases our production
• High rotation crops like radish or bok choy don’t fully utilize the soil or benefit from the soil warming characteristics of the container, so we don’t grow these crops in containers

For us, even though we could grow “less valuable” crops like lettuce in a container, we’d prefer to grow these crops using less expensive growing techniques.

Short season, or short cycle, crops are another example.  If the crop’s growth results in excessive “down time” for the growing container, we’re not getting value from it.  That growing space is better served by a “full season” crop.

This concept of “crop value” is highly personalized, though.  Our perception of value can be very different from your perception of value.  There isn’t a single viewpoint here.

The point is that matching crop value to the cost of operation helps maximize the cost benefit of the container garden.

Have Spares & Keep It Well Maintained

One of the perspectives we have after operating container gardens for decades is the “long term” outlook.

Even if you buy very high quality equipment, entropy is an unavoidable aspect of everything.  Things will eventually break or need maintenance, especially over a long enough time frame.

Having spare equipment and the things you need to keep a container garden in top shape is a good idea.  It sucks when small, stupid things derail your plans.

This is especially true for us northern growers.  The harsh winters are not kind on equipment, often accelerating the inevitable destruction of things.

We try to maintain spare gear of those things necessary for the operation of our container gardens.  This is also true of supporting systems, like irrigation parts and other things.

When things break on us, it’s not a disaster.  We have what is needed to fix the problem and keep things working how we need them to.

Lastly, clean your container garden gear!  Gardening is a “dirty job,” but that’s not an excuse to keep things dirty.  Cleaning your equipment can go a long way in extending the life of things and increasing the pleasure of using your gear.