Container Garden Onions, Sand Soil Mix
March 31, 2011
We somewhat regularly grow a quantity of onions in our garden each year, along with everything else, but this year we’re going to try something a little different as an experiment. That is, growing some of them in a container (bucket). Many homes do not have the space for a full-on garden, so container gardening is often a great alternative, and actually has its benefits!
A container can be moved around or placed anywhere. In other words, you can find the sunny location and put it there.
A container will keep underground critters from getting to the roots of your plants (gophers, etc…).
The soil mixture can be specifically tailored to each container and variety of vegetable that you are growing.
The soil to grow onions (bulbs) needs to be porous and sandy. Thick clay soils, packed with lots of organic matter, are too dense for good growth, but adding some sand to clay soil will greatly assist in onion growth (should be good for carrots and other vegetables too).
Onions are very high in moisture content and that moisture is taken directly from the soil. The goal is to have moist soil but not wet soil. To test the moisture content, take a handful of the soil and clench it in your fist. If water squeezes out between your fingers, the soil is too wet for onions to do well. Having an amount of sand mixed in with the soil will help to avoid soggy wet soil because of the increased drainage properties that the sand provides.
In today’s short video, I am simply mixing a quantity of sand with the soil, to provide a nice loamy and well draining loose soil mixture which is best for growing onions.
It’s as simple as this:
Gardening, of any sort, is one of the underlying basic essentials of survival preparedness skills that lead to further self-sufficiency and self-reliance, less dependency on other systems, and definitely adds a level of peace-of-mind that is hard to explain. We challenge you to give it a try 
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Potato Container Garden Harvest
July 17, 2010
This particular potato bucket container garden was an experiment.
Knowing that it is recommended to use special ‘seed’ potatoes rather than grocery-store variety potatoes, I decided to go ahead anyway, and used a few older sprouting Idaho potatoes that were purchased at the grocery store. Apparently many grocery store potatoes are treated such that growth or sprouting is inhibited, so to last longer on the store shelves.
I also wanted to see if growing potatoes in a container could be successful with a mostly hands-off approach, except for watering.
Well, normally, potatoes will evidently grow anywhere from 2.5 to as long as 5 months, after two and a half months, the results are in…
Watch the short video to see what happened
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Strawberry Survival Food?
May 18, 2010
Whether for fun or for survival, don’t just plant the staple foods in your survival garden,
include some sweets!
A simple and deliciously sweet food to grow are strawberries. If grown properly, they can provide fresh strawberries from Spring into the Fall with a seemingly endless harvest throughout. What better treat from a garden than a bowl of fresh picked strawberries!
When choosing your strawberry plants, we suggest that you choose the ‘Everbearing’ variety which will keep on producing during the year, and will grow well for about 5 years before losing vigor, whereas the June Bearing variety only produce once during the year (you guessed it, around June), although the strawberries will be larger (they too will come back year after year for about 5 years.
Planting and location is pretty simple. They like full sun and well drained, sandy soil. I didn’t pay particular attention to the soil that I used and they have grown vigorously (I used regular generic soil from Home Depot). They like ample water each week (1 or 2 inches).
Having used these planters for several years for tomatoes, last year we re-purposed two of our ‘upside-down tomato garden’ planters to accommodate strawberry plants instead. Pots and containers work great too. We stuffed about 15 or so into each 2 x 2 foot container, which seems about right at the moment (this will be their 2nd year).
Why don’t you try it? Growing your own garden, big or small, is rewarding and liberating. Plus, a handful of fresh strawberries in a bowl of french vanilla ice-cream is to die for… (although ice-cream may be hard to come by after TEOTWAWKI
Here is a video of our little strawberry patch:
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Container Gardening With Potatoes
May 14, 2010
Apparently it is pretty easy to grow potatoes in a container garden. I decided to try growing some Idaho potatoes that were purchased from the grocery store and had sat around a little too long. I noticed there were lots of buds growing from the eyes in the potatoes that were left in the bag. I know that it is recommended to buy special ‘seed’ potatoes, one reason being that supposedly store-bought potatoes have certain inhibitors to keep buds from growing.
However, having observed my surprising little vigorous batch of potato buds, I decided to give it a real world try to see if it actually works well, which could prove quite simple and economical for people who are trying to save money, grow their own food, and to be more self sufficient and prepared.
How To Grow a Potato Container Garden
I cut each potato into about 2 inch slices, each slice having one or two sprouting buds. Then I let the pieces dry out for a few days, which causes the fleshy part to crust over and helps to keep it from rotting when it is planted into the soil.
I used a bucket container that I found on sale for only $5, and is about 2 feet tall and 2 feet diameter. I drilled 6 holes in the bottom for drainage (about 1/2 inch each) and cut a piece of landscape cloth the diameter of the bottom of the bucket and placed inside to keep the soil from plugging the holes.
I filled the container with about 10 inches of soil and planted the potato bud pieces about 2 to 4 inches deep with the bud sprout side facing up. The soil is a mixture of 3 parts generic gardening soil with 1 part compost manure.
After planting, I soaked the soil with water and kept the container out of the sun so it would not dry out before the sprouts broke through the surface, which took about 1 to 2 weeks for all of them. I had planted 8 potato pieces, which may have been a bit too much for this size bucket, but I wanted to load it up good.
After the potatoes have grown to about 8 inches in height, add 4 more inches of soil to cover the foliage and stems. This will allow additional potato tubers to grow. When the growth again reaches about 8 inches above the surface, add another 4 inches of soil. Do this until you reach a few inches below the top of the container. This will maximize your yield.
So far this potato container garden has been doing extremely well and is growing quite vigorously.
Video of potato container garden
Another garden that I have going is container gardening with onions.
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Container Gardening
April 1, 2010
The container garden, or garden-in-a-bucket, is a simple method to grow plants and vegetables when without a traditional in-ground garden, or to simply augment your existing garden. It allows you to mix specific soil and nutrition blends which may be different depending on the types of plants or vegetables that you are growing, and as such will enable you to optimize the growing conditions to produce a higher yield.
Advantages of Container Gardening
Container Gardening has its advantages. The container can be moved to wherever it is convenient including the sunny spot of a mostly shaded yard. The ideal sunny spot in your yard may not be conducive to an in-ground garden. That is, your perfect garden location with the best sunlight may be located on a slab of concrete, or in a rocky area of very poor soil quality for example. Placing a container garden in that spot is a perfect solution.
Being in a container, the plants and roots will be protected from pests and critters which dig through the ground such as ground moles or gophers. If you are renting your living space, and if you decide to move, you can simply take your garden with you. In short, the container garden method is simple to set up, easy to maintain, and is a great way to produce some food for you and your family.
One thing to remember though, is you will have to pay closer attention to watering the soil in a container garden since it will dry out quicker. It helps quite a lot to add a few inches of mulch on top.
Growing Onions in a Container
I have just finished my growing-onions-in-a-container project and I will keep you posted on its progress as the onions grow. Last year I had picked up several 18 gallon plastic bucket containers at Home Depot on sale for five dollars each. They seemed perfect for a garden-in-a-bucket. In this experiment I am using organically grown Velencia Onions from seed, a Utah strain of Yellow Spanish Onion with mild flavor and good storage life. The globes will grow up to one pound with a 4 inch diameter bulb, and I will thin them out to about twenty onions in this particular size container.
After drilling out half a dozen 3/8 inch holes in the bottom of the plastic container, I cut a 20 inch diameter piece of landscape fabric to fit on the bottom to keep the soil from plugging the drainage holes. Then I mixed up a soil recipe of 1 part steer manure, 1 part chicken manure, and 6 parts generic potting soil and added this soil mixture to the bucket, to a depth of about eight inches.
Ideally I want to end up with 19 onions in this size container (20 inch diameter) with rows of 3, 4, 5, 4, 3 to accommodate the 4 inch diameter maximum size of each onion globe. I sowed more seeds than that, and will thin them out after I discover how many will successfully germinate. After sowing, I gave them a good watering and have left the bucket inside the house where it is warm and to keep an eye on it to be sure that the soil remains moist.
For onions to germinate, the soil temperature cannot be colder than 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which is actually a lower minimum requirement than many other vegetables. The germination process will take between 4 and 13 days, and the growth to maturity will take between 105 and 130 days. Onions need abundant sunlight and good watering.
The Valencia / Spanish Yellow onion is considered a “long-day” onion and will begin to form bulbs when daylight reaches about 14 – 16 hours and is better suited for northern regions where summer daylight lasts longer. Although I live near coastal central California which is a bit better suited for short-day onions which begin to from bulbs at 10 – 12 hour daylight, I am hoping to have success with this variety.
Onions like a nitrogen rich environment, so add ammonium sulfate or ammonium nitrate fertilizer about once a month (21-0-0), about half a cup per 10 row feet. For me and this particular container, that will be slightly less than a quarter cup.
Long Term Storage of Onions
After the onions have grown and are harvested, there are two great ways to store onions for the long term. One way is to slice them into at least quarter inch slices, and store in freezer bags in the freezer. The other is to cut into medium size slices and pieces, and dehydrate them. Just be sure to put your dehydrator outside for this one – I think you’ll know why!
Video of my Onion Container Garden
(High Definition default – lower the resolution if video has jitter)
Update: Not all of the onion seeds germinated, so I am adding more seeds to the container along with those that have successfully germinated.
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