Can I grow vegetables in buckets and old containers?

Plants have no opinion about the container. They care about volume, depth, drainage, and whether the roots cook. A black builders' bucket at a few pounds outperforms a decorative pot of the same size for growing food, and a stack of them costs less than one garden centre planter.

Safety

Step by step

1. Choose containers by volume first.A standard builders' bucket is around 15 litres and about 28cm deep, which suits a single tomato, a courgette, a pepper, or a clump of beans. Trugs and tubs of 40 litres and up suit potatoes, courgettes and small shrubs.
2. Check the depth against the crop.15cm for salad and herbs, 25cm for bush tomatoes and strawberries, 30cm for cordon tomatoes, courgettes and beetroot, 40cm for maincrop potatoes and carrots. A shallow washing-up bowl is a salad tray, not a vegetable planter.
3. Drill proper drainage in the base.Five or six 12mm holes across the base with an ordinary wood or HSS bit — plastic drills easily. Holes low in the sides instead of the base leave a permanent reservoir at the bottom, which is fine for a self-watering setup and bad for everything else.
4. Know which plastics last.Polypropylene and HDPE — most buckets, trugs and storage boxes — are tough and reasonably UV-stable. Thin polystyrene-type plastics and cheap storage crates go chalky and shatter after a season or two in the sun.
5. Deal with heat in dark containers.Black plastic in full sun heats the compost at the edge substantially. Stand dark buckets in a group so they shade each other, slip them inside a lighter outer pot, or site them where they get afternoon shade.
6. Fill with fresh compost, not garden soil.Garden soil compacts in a container, drains badly and brings weed seed and pests. Peat-free multipurpose for annual crops; add a third loam-based for anything staying more than a season.
7. Reject anything with an unknown chemical history.Food-grade drums, builders' buckets, storage boxes and old trugs are fine. Anything that smells of solvent, has an unreadable hazard label, or came from a workshop is not worth using for food.
8. Group and mulch them.Small containers dry out fast. Standing them together on a gravel tray, mulching the surface, and watering thoroughly rather than often is what makes a bucket garden manageable.

Tips

• Rubble sacks and heavy-duty builders' bags make excellent potato and courgette containers, roll down to any height, and cost almost nothing. They last two or three seasons before the UV gets them.
• Old plastic storage boxes with the lid used as a drip tray underneath is a neat trick for a balcony or a paved yard.
• Drill the drainage holes before you fill. Turning a full bucket over to drill it is a job nobody enjoys twice.

Common mistakes

• No drainage holes because the container looks nice — Standing water at the base kills roots within weeks and turns the compost sour. Every food container needs holes in the base without exception.
• Using a container that held weedkiller, wood preservative or fuel — Residues persist in plastic and can be taken up by food crops. There is no way to clean a plastic drum reliably enough to be confident.
• Reusing old compost straight from last year's buckets — It has lost structure and nutrients and may hold vine weevil eggs or disease. Refresh it, blend it with fresh, or use it as mulch.

Questions people ask