I highly recommend that you purchase "Bountiful Container" by Rose McGee & Maggie Stuckey. It does a wonderful job of breaking down container gardening in a useful way, by plant variety. They give you a lot of great ideas for the containers themselves, and recommend specific cultivars that in their experience do best in containers. It's about $12 on Amazon, or I'm sure your local book seller has or could get a copy of it for you. Maybe even your library. The book really helped me to get a good basic understanding, and to focus my growing goals a bit better.

To protect my containers from squirrels, I collected and use the old grids from grills. Heavy enough to handle the squirrels weight and difficult for them to move. On others, I use that black bird netting - seems they don't like to touch it. After my plants are well established I remove the cover.

I used hardware cloth over the containers, and I also placed large flat rocks in the containers on top of the soil (overnight). However, I found that the raccoons would yank over entire plants/containers. So I got a live-trap, and I trapped 8 raccoons over the course of a month or so.

Josh

Thank you very much for the book recommendation. :) I shall purchase and study.

I've also read up more on the SWCs and Earthtainers. Great Ideas! And after an afternoon of phone calling, I found some pine bark fines!

I'm hoping to have some pictures of my new container garden soon!

I bought all my containers at lowes and used regular potting soil from lowes. Here are some pictures of my container garden.

Here is a link that might be useful: Click here to see my pictures.

clumsy: For an easy start, put the veggies in MG Moisture Control mix with some dolomite lime (HD, Lowe's) in the mix. You'll do fine. Tomatoes grow ok in 5 gallon pots, but prefer closer to 10 (some Cherry varieties can be an exception to this). The pepper plants will be fine in 3-5 gallon containers. The watermelon, yellow squash, cucumbers & maybe the zucchini will need a lot of flat area to grow out on...not sure how well they'd do in a container. Maybe an extremely large one on a deck where the vines could have room to grow out onto the deck. They all spread easily. The other choices of yours should be easier though. =)

- Steve

I have been growing peppers in containers for years. I use a 3 gallon black nursery container. My favorite variety is "Gypsy" ( a sweet pepper) ; 1 plant/container with a 33" tomato cage in each pot for support. Be prepared to water daily during hot days in july, august and september when the plants get pot bound. I have also had great luck with indeterminate cherry tomatoes in the same container with a 52" cage. Favorite varieties are: "Sweet Million" and "Sunsugar". These containers/cages need to be supported by a stake driven into the adjacent ground to keep them from blowing over in bad weather. I have also grown smaller tomatoes in these containers as well, try "Window-Box Roma". I have not had any success growing larger variety tomatoes in containers due to end rot.

I use good garden soil that is enriched with compost.

Good Luck !

PVick lives in a highrise in either Chicago or NYC and you should check her container gardens out. They are beautiful and she really gives meaning to rooftop gardening..all of hers are in containers. Flowers, vines, vegetables. Just amazing! Check out her collage of her flowers. When you rub the mouse over the picture, it tells you the name of the flower or vegetable.

I just started last year, and I turned buckets and plastic tubs into containers that have a 3" water resevoir by following a do it yourself instructions from a guy on line. This link is for tubs, but I also found instructions for 5 gallon buckets on line last year also.

I grew tomatoes (I recommend the Cherry Large and the VF100 personally-Cherry large if you can only have one kind), peppers, squash 4 different kinds), Brocolli, pole beans, and bush beans in them...worked good as long as I filled up the water level on them every day.

One thing- many recommend putting plastic over top of the containers as a mulch...but I recommend shredded newspaper...it worked better for me. (I would wet the newspaper everyonce in a while to keep it from blowing away if the winds picked up.

I'm growing seedlings again this year right now to put in the boxes in about 3 weeks.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13939141/Earth-Box
http://www.josho.com/gardening.htm