The great thing about these 5 easy vegetables to grow at home in pots, is that you can do it in just about any small space that you have. You don’t need lavish garden beds outside to grow yourself food. You can choose a large container with drainage holes.
And that is why container gardening is awesome! If your pot is big enough, and deep enough and you can add drainage holes, you can use just about ANYTHING to grow food plants in.
Give Your Plants a Head Start
Vegetables that are easy to grow, still need a few things to happen. Remember the important things you need to get right in order to grow your own food include the container, the soil, the water, the light, and the food (or fertilizer).
Give your plants a head start by germinating them indoors, or with a cold frame. Doing this will let you know that are 100% organic, you can monitor their light requirements and start them off with strong stems.
If you have the space inside your home, some of these plants will do well as indoor plants, especially if they don’t need plenty of space, they have good soil, and get as much sunlight as they need to grow well.
Tools Needed
- Small containers for individual seedlings
- Large pot with good drainage
- Potting soil (NOT garden soil)
- Compost or castings that you can get from your own earthworm farm, or other organic matter suitable to your plants
- The right location for sun light
1. Beans
Beans are a very easy vegetable to grow at home and they grow pretty fast.
** There are a large variety of bean seeds available, so hop online and order a mixture to grow at home
If you set everything up correctly from the beginning, you won’t need to do much more except water it.
Ensure their pH of their soil is slightly acidic at around 6.0, and if you start off with a good, rich soil, they will pretty much take care of themselves as they can fix their own nitrogen in the soil.
There are a variety of beans that you can grow in containers:
- Green beans
- Runner beans
- Bush beans
- Broad beans
- Dwarf beans
- French beans
They are just hardy plants that will thrive even if you don’t have much time to maintain them.
2. Butternut and Pumpkin
Butternut and pumpkins, and all gourds actually, are some of the easiest vegetables to grow.
They germinate in approximately 7 days and develop a strong stem right from the start. If you plant them in early spring and allow enough space for them to grow, leave them to get full sun throughout the day and sooner than later you’ll be eating butternut soup for lunch.
One of the main things to do to get the best results is to give them enough of the most nutritious fertilizer at the right time because they are heavy feeders.
A great addition to an entrance way if the sunlight is right, is to build an arch and train your gourd plants to grow up and over the arch.
** Get your own butternut seeds
** Get your own pumpkin seeds
3. Leafy greens
Salad greens are easy to grow and can do well in partial shade.
You can plant them in containers outside your kitchen door so you can just pop outside when you need some for your meals, or grow them inside on your windowsill. The more creatives can even create a gorgeous living wall in your house.
Even if you are growing them from lettuce seeds, you should be able to grow them with very little problems. Keep an eye out for caterpillars and other pesky bugs who also like to eat lettuce leaves for dinner but most of these can just be handpicked off the plant.
The great thing about these green leafy plants is that most varieties are cut-and-come again types. This means that you cut the leaves you need and the lettuce plant will continue to grow. This doesn’t last forever so you will need to plane more and practice succession planting to ensure there is always enough available.
In addition to lettuce, kale is another green plant that is so good for you – and over time its become a good idea to include kale leaves in green smoothies.
4. Peppers
This veggie goes by a variety of names. Sweet peppers, bell peppers, yellow peppers, green peppers, and red peppers. The thing with these pepper plants is that they are not hot at all. The yellow and the red ones are sweeter than the green ones, and if you want to remove any bitterness, carefully cut away the white pith underneath the skin.
Sweet peppers and bell peppers have a long growing period. It’s best to start them off indoors and after five to six weeks, transplant the young plants into their pots.
These plants need at least 6 hours of sunlight every single day to thrive but as long as you water them, they should burst into little white flowers, which then turn into the peppers you can pick as you need.
Pepper plants love plenty of sunlight especially produce lots of fruit especially during their productive seasons when they are growing lots of fruit.
Peppers are heavy feeders so make sure that you start off with well-prepared soil. Work the soil three weeks before planting to ensure you have the correct pH balance.
** Also try these chocolate peppers !
5. Chilies
Chilis are so easy to grow from home. You can change up the color, variety and the temperature as there are such a great variety of chili seeds available. You don’t need a very deep pot for them which makes them great to grow in hanging baskets too.
More Food Plants to Grow in Pots and Containers
For those who enjoy growing root vegetables, you can also try to grow the following, either in pots or in a raised bed that is deep enough:
- Onions
- Garlic (easy to grow, it just takes a long time)
- Beetroot from beet seeds
- Carrots from carrot seeds (try have a wide container or the carrots could end up being deformed)
- Potato plant (easier in a fabric pots)
There is a lot of satisfaction in picking food from your own vegetable garden. The vegetable varieties that you choose to grow should be the types of plants that your family enjoys eating, otherwise there isn’t really any point.
What vegetable do you find easiest to grow?
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