My neighbor's raised beds made me rethink container gardening completely

I live in Denver and spent 3 years hauling bags of potting soil onto my apartment balcony for tomatoes that barely produced. Last spring my neighbor let me compare her 4x8 raised bed setup against my 20 gallon pots and the difference was ridiculous. Same cherry tomato variety but she got 15 pounds to my 3 pounds over the season. Has anyone else made the switch from containers to actual ground beds and seen a huge jump like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_max25d ago

Whoa wait, hold up! 3 pounds from a 20 gallon pot? That's insane. I had a similar shock when I moved from 5 gallon buckets to a 3x6 raised bed. My bucket tomatoes gave me maybe 6 pounds total, then the first year in the bed I picked over 25 pounds from the same variety. The soil just stays way more stable in the ground, it doesn't dry out as fast and the roots can really spread out. Plus you don't have to water them every single day when it's hot out. That 15 to 3 pound difference sounds about right, the pots just can't hold the moisture or the nutrients for a full season.

grace8925d ago

Man, that raised bed jump is wild. I did the same thing but with peppers. Had a single jalapeno plant in a 5 gallon bucket for years, got maybe 10 peppers total. Threw it in a 4x4 bed and that one plant gave me like 50 jalapenos. Even then, @the_max you're totally right about the pot vs ground thing. I learned the hard way with a fig tree in a half barrel - it just refused to grow until I put it in the actual dirt. The soil mass difference is no joke.

carr.lee24d ago

Roots can really spread out" until they hit the bottom of the pot and stop, right?