Allsup: Gardening in a bucket | Home & Garden

Like some of our bucket gardeners, I had no access to land for several years, but a strong desire to grow. This was a far cry from my childhood gardening experiences where my grandparents had rows and rows of tomatoes, peppers, onions, green beans and squash. But because of my desire to grow my own vegetables and herbs, I started growing everything in containers.

In my endeavors, I learned certain vegetables like eggplant, pepper, carrot, radish, beet, greens and many herbs were easy to grow in a small amount of soil. Tomatoes, potatoes and squash grow large and their growth potential and ability to produce was stunted in the containers. The first time I grew eggplant in a container, I got more than 20 fruits in a growing season. This was a harvest worth watering throughout the growing season.

In the “Garden in the Bucket” program, we grow a mixture of carrots, peppers, thyme, basil and kale. All produced ample harvest. This year, I am experimenting with eggplant, Swiss chard, spinach and green beans, as well as smaller 2.5 gallon buckets — a five gallon bucket full of soil is not fun to move around. Even though we are coming close to the start of fall, you can still grow vegetables and herbs in a bucket this year!