The Ozarks has good soil well mixed with gravel. As my place is in a creek bottom, the gravel is a fifty fifty mix. That makes container gardening attractive.
Regular Garden
There are lots of things I grow that won’t work well in containers. Okra is one of them. One year I had an okra plant thirteen feet tall!
Pumpkins, summer and monster squash work better in the regular garden beds too. As do the tomatoes as there are so many of them.
Easy Containers
My local feed store sells cattle lick tubs. These are sturdy plastic affairs that usually withstand cattle attacks.
The feed store buys back the empty tubs giving the ranchers someplace to go with them. Gardeners and others can buy the empties. And I have.
A few half inch holes in the bottom work for drainage. However, I am now putting the holes on the sides about an inch and a half up so I can set the tubs on the ground.
Challenges
Next year my container gardening will be easy, easier anyway. This year I have twenty-five empty containers to fill.
First, I put in a layer of larger gravel. This goes up an inch or so over the holes. This is a lot of gravel.
For the moment I am cleaning up the yard, chicken yard and barn lot. This did need doing, but was so easy to let slide. Now I need the gravel.
Second comes the dirt. These are big tubs needing close to a cubic yard of dirt. This is in short supply unless I order a load of unknown top soil with unknown ingredients in it.
I do have some dirt in tractor tires once used as raised beds, but now filled with weeds. A fifty fifty mix with compost will fill most, if not all of the containers. It just takes time and effort.
Container Gardening Dreams
What will I plant in these containers once they are ready? Perhaps carrots, lettuce, leeks, green onions and peppers will fill most of them. Onion sets are in some set up in previous years. They do well in them.
One thing is for sure. It will be interesting to see how well my container gardening experiment works out.