Susan asked for a list of vegetable varieties that do well in containers.

So, here's my faves for containers, and I hope others of you who grow in containers will add yours too.

BEANS, LIMA: Fordhook Bush, Bush Baby, Fordhook 242

BEANS, SNAP: almost any bush bean will do well in containers, but it takes quite a few plants to get a good-enough sized harvest to regulary eat beans. If you plant too few plants, you'll have a continual small harvest that doesn't give you enough to cook at one time. Some suggested varieties: Contender, Provider, TopCrop, Royalty Purple Bush Bean, Derby

BEETS: Cylindra (grow more oblong than round), Spinel Little Ball, Red Ace, Burpee Golden Beet, Bull's Blood

BROCCOLI: any, but especially Small Miracle and Munchkin because they stay smaller

BRUSSELS SPROUTS: any

CABBAGE: Minicole, Dwarf Morden, Earliball, Fast Ball, Gonzales, Caraflex and other mini cabbages from Johnny's Selected Seeds

CHARD: any, but Bright Lights and Neon Lights are especially attractive

CAULIFLOWER: any

CHINESE CABBAGE: Bok Choy, Wong Bok

COLLARDS: any

CORN: any early or space-saving type. My two faves for containers are Early Sunglow and Dwarf Blue Jade, but Golden Bantam is almost as compact.

CUCUMBERS:

Slicing--Lemon Cuke (if trellised or caged), Saladbush, Spacemaster, Bush Champion, Bush Baby

Pickling--Picklebush, Burpee Pickler. Any pickling type can be grown in a container if trellised or caged but you need a LOT of plants to have enough pickling cukes ready for pickling at one time. Otherwise you do endless tiny batches of pickles.

EGGPLANT: Fairy Tale (2005 AAS winner) is perfectly sized, and Hansel and Gretel are almost as compact. Pretty much any eggplant variety can be grown in a container if you use a large enough container.

KALE: any

KOHLRABI: Grand Duke

LETTUCE: Pretty much any should work. I like Black-Seeded Simpson, Simpson Elite, Tom Thumb, Little Gem, Red Sails and Buttercrunch.

MELONS: You could plant almost any true cantaloupe or muskmelon in a container if you give the plant a tomato cage or trellis to climb. You support the larger melons with pantyhose leg sections tied to the trellis or cage, or with slings made of cheesecloth tied to the trellis or cage. We like the flavor of Hale's Jumbo Best, but others we've trellised include Collective Farm Woman, Eden's Gem, Pike, Early Frame Prescott, Crane, Ambrosia, Athena, and Prescott Fond Blanc.

OKRA: Little Lucy, Baby Bubba are the best two. Any heirloom like Choppee that stays 3' tall or shorter also works, but you need a large container or the wind sometimes will blow them over.

ONION: Bunching types work best. Beltsville Bunching, Japanese Bunching, Crystal Wax,

PEAS: Any bush pea type will work, but even bush peas grow better if they have a trellis or cage. Most of them get 22-28" tall. Little Marvel, Sugar Ann, Sugar Bon, Cascadia. For a Snow Pea, Little Sweetie.

PEPPERS: Any and all do very well in containers. My faves are: pretty much any jalapeno, but especially Mucho Nacho and Biker Billy; any habanero (white habs stay especially compact and yellow-fruited Fatali is especially gorgeous); Sweet Banana or Hot Banana, Hot Red Cherry, Yolo Wonder. My favorite sweet bells for containers are Roumanian Rainbow and Blushing Beauty. This year I planted Renee's Garden Seeds' Sweet Bell Pepper mix (it has one yellow, one orange and one red variety in it) both in containers and in the ground and had incredible yields from both. Cubanelle and Pizza both grow well in containers for me. Zavory and Fish performed outstandingly well in containes, and I have one of each in a container now that spends days on the patio and nights in the garage.

POTATOES: Any if the containers are large enough. I have grown both fingerling types and regular types in containers with good yields.

PUMPKIN: A large container is necessary to get any pumpkins large enough to eat. I wouldn't plant them in anything less than something the size or a whiskey half-barrel or child's wading pool. Cheyenne Bush pumpkin is compact "for a pumpkin" (face it, all pumpkins are large and rampant growers). So is Bushkin. Small Sugar Pie and Seminole can be grown in a wading pool as long as you let the vines themselves ramble and roam (both climb fences and trees quite well for me, as well as tomato cages and anything else that can wrap tendrils around and climb).

Very small pumpkins/winter squash can be grown in containes with trellises or cages. These are mostly more decorative (Jack Be Little and Baby Boo) but some small ones are edible, like Lil' Pump-ke-mon.

RADISHES: Any spring type do great in containers. I haven't tried the larger winter radishes in containers. Sparkler, Scarlet Globe, French Breakfast, White Icicle, White Hailstone, Cherry Belle

SPINACH: Any. If you want fresh spinach leaves for salads or to eat raw, containers work pretty well. If you want it for cooking, you'd need a lot of containers. A lot of spinach cooks down to a relatively small amount.

SUMMER SQUASH: Early Summer Yellow Crookneck, Papaya Pear, Peter Pan, Ronde de Nice, Eight Ball, Dixie and for a zuke type, Raven.

SWEET POTATO: Porto Rico. Two varieties I trialed for Gary that performed very well in a large container were Bugs Bunny and Heartogold. I think any sweet potato could be grown in containers but you don't want a soil mix that is excessively rich, and you need one that drains well.

TOMATO: You can grow almost any tomato in a container if you match up the size of the mature plant to the right-sized container for it. However, some hybrid plants bred for containers (esp. the really small plants) produce fruit with poor flavor or with very tough skin. Here's a few that work well for me.

For very small containers: Red Robin, Yellow Canary, Orange Pixie. I've tried Tiny Tim and it had disease issues, produced poorly and we just didn't care for it.

For 5-gallon to 7-gallon or larger containers: Patio, Scarlet Red, Red Defender, Martino's Roma, Principe Borghese, Pixie, Whippersnapper, Tumbling Tom Red, Tumbling Tom Yellow, Sweet Baby Girl, Window Box Roma, Sophie's Choice, Ildi, Mountain Princess, San Marzano, Bush Early Girl, Small Fry, Black Plum, New Big Dwarf and Glacier.

For 10-gallon to 20-gallon or larger: Little Lucky, Jaune Flammee, Southern Night, Bush Goliath, Grape, Sungold, Fourth of July (very early producer, even in containers), Tomatoberry, Pink Brandymaster (outperformed Pink Brandymaster in the ground), Chocolate Stripes, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Indian Stripe, Sioux, Rutgers, Jet Star, Supersonic, Momotaro (produced just as heavily in containers as in the ground, which is really something), Stump of the World, Livingston's Gold Ball, Lemon Boy, Sunray, Green Grape, Sweet Million.

A special note about Tumbling Tom Red and Tumbling Tom Yellow. They grow great in hanging baskets or in containers placed on the ground and produce heavily early. Although their flavor is what I consider only 'average', even an average home-grown tomato is far superior to grocery store tomatoes, and the guys at DS's fire station liked these two just fine. In the ground, my Tumbling Tom tomatoes spread out 4' in all directions and were lovely groundcover type plants that also produced heavily. They were, however, the favorite tomato plant of grasshoppers who literally stripped them of every leaf before moving on to any other tomato. Other tomato plants were only 'nibbled' by the hoppers. These were devoured.

GIGANTIC CONTAINERS: If I wanted to grow a currant type of tomato in a container, I'd only plant it in something like a 4' diameter stock tank in order to allow it to reach its usual massive size. I'm toying with the idea of planting a Tess's Land Race' Currant in the stock tank next year, and undeplanting it with Tumbling Tom Yellow and Tumbling Tom Red.


WINTER SQUASH: Butter Bush, Bush Table Queen, Bush Acorn. There's lots of bush types to choose from.

WATERMELONS: Bush Sugar Baby, Yellow Doll if in a container the size of a whiskey half barrel (I use molasses feed tubs, and I think the rope-handled muck buckets would work fine). If you had a child's wading pool (punch holes in the bottom for drainage) or a 4' stock tank or something similar, I think you could plant regular Sugar Baby, Blacktail Mountain or maybe Yellow Sugar lump.

Most herbs grow fine in containers, but I usually stick with dwarf forms of basil for containers because standard basils can become huge monsters.

If I forgot any specific variety of veggie, remind me and I'll add it.

Dawn