My Container Garden Setup

Here's the view from my rooftop. The pointy one left of center is the Empire State Building.

For other poor souls trying to figure out how to garden in containers I figured I should go over my setup. There is a ton of conflicting information on the net, and I waded through most of it. The two places where I did find consensus were container size and potting medium. 5 gallons works, 15 gallons is better, and the mix should be a light, well draining, soil-less mixture.

I have 3 toms in 5 gallon buckets with drainage holes drilled about 2 inches up on the sides. The rest are in 14 gallon nursery planters I picked up on the cheap. The pots/drainage holes are all lined with black landscape fabric to keep mix in the pots.

Everything is planted in Pro-Mix, except for Kellogg's Breakfast, which got Miracle Grow moisture control. Everything is mulched with about 2 inches of shredded cedar mulch. All the pots that are not white plastic have been wrapped with white sheets that I cut up. The mulch and the sheets make a big difference since the roof gets very hot at midday.

At planting all pots got a handful of Osmocote time release, a giant handful of dehydrated cow-manure fertilizer, a handful of bone meal, a handful of epsom salts, and a tablespoon of Espoma Tomato-tone. I mixed all of this into the top 8 inches of medium.

When one is undertaking vegetables for the first time, working out the fertilizer is probably the most frustrating part. I settled on an average of sorts from a couple of different posters on various discussion forums, figuring that something would work. From here on out I'm going to stick to the tomato-tone guidelines and side dress with the manure monthly.