Building a Portable Garden

Building my garden this year was challenging to me for two reasons.

First, this is my first garden! Sure, I always helped my mom garden, but our gardens were never huge. We usually stuck with just some tomatoes and green peppers. This is the first garden that I have grown all myself, so I am still trying to figure out the best ways to do things.

Second, this whole year has been a huge transition for me, having just gotten married. My husband and I have been trying to find a house to buy, as we are renting now. Really anytime now we could move, so when spring rolled around, I was unsure of what to do. Should I plant a big garden, and risk having to leave it behind? Or not plant at all, and not have any juicy, garden fresh tomatoes?

 Neither seemed like a good option, so eventually I made a decision to compromise; I would make a portable garden! Then, if we moved in the middle of the season, I could take my garden with me. Basically, that meant planting most everything in containers.

Most things went in pots as large as I could find, and when I ran out of those I started using five gallon buckets, and when I ran out of those I started using feed sacks from our chicken feed. When I ran out of those I planted the rest in the ground.

Peppers went in buckets.

Sweet potatoes went in feed sacks.

And the dill.

This tomato plant randomly sprouted up in the same bucket as my peppers. This is probably because a rotten tomato got thrown into the compost bin at some point, and then the compost was used in the garden. I call these volunteer plants.

This cantaloupe plant was also a volunteer!

The spaghetti squash, cucumbers, and the tomatoes (not pictured) got planted in pots or buckets. As they got bigger and needed support, I put up a temporary fence next to them made of a section of welded wire fencing and t-posts, and tied them up with baling twine.

After I ran out of containers to plant in, I decided to go ahead and plant the rest of my garden in the ground, even though I might not be able to take it with me, at least I could bring some.

Pictured here are the corn, beans, carrots, and rhubarb.

In this pot I planted mint, but this came up instead. I don't know what happened, but it sure is a cute flower! I looked it up, and I believe it is called torenia.

Overall, the container method works well as long as you have large containers and water everyday, especially in hot weather. It is portable, so I could take my garden with me if I needed to, or just move it to a more sunny part of the yard.