What should I plant in 5 liter food grade buckets?

[ericbernhard]

Hello everyone,
since I have planted the beds in my back yard to the max I am stuck with container gardening. Since I am cheap I simply use food grade buckets that I get for free from the cafeteria at a nearby hospital. Normally they give me 10 liter buckets, which have worked well for me in the past (for peppers for example) but this time they gave me 5 liter buckets. Since beggars can´t be choosers I took them anyway, which leaves me with one question:

What can I plant in 5 liter buckets that will grow fairly well and not need to be overly coddled the entire season?

Our summers are relatively cool and rain is plentiful enough that there are only really two months out of the year where I need to water regularly.
For any suggestions I am grateful.

[walt]

Will you have room to take them inside during the winter?  And would they have enough light to grow well inside?
If so, then I'd put the wild pepper, chiltipine, in them.  Chiltipines are very hot peppers, but also have wonderful flavor.  Chiltipines are long-lived shrubs in the wild.  And wild ones are photo-period sensitive, and don't bloom for me until almost frost.  But I take mine inside and they will go ahead and produce inside under poor conditions.  In the spring, I cut back the unhealthy growth they made with too little light over the winter, then they put on new, healthy growth again during the summer.
I have also grown hybrids of Thai hot pepper x chiltipine like that, but those hybrids would bloom and produce peppers sooner, outside, and continue producing inside for sometime, until lack of light stopped production.
Many other things could be grown in 10 liters of soil.  Kale, lettuce, radishes, many herbs.  It depends on light and space.

[ferdzy]

If you enjoy the mild mustards like rapini or bok choy etc, I think they would work well. They (plants) are not too big, grow quickly, and don't do well in open ground, at least not for me. Slugs and snails love them too much and given the size of the plants they get eaten very quickly.

[khoomeizhi]

yup, and i'd add mizuna to that list. 5 liters really is pretty small. best bet is probably greens that you can harvest relatively small. almost anything else i can think of is likely to resent the limitation to their roots. except maybe getting some kind of very dwarfing fruiting shrub like a lowbush blueberry or similar? might need too much coddling...

[ericbernhard]

Thanks for the great ideas. I'm glad I asked you. I have peppers in the 10 liter buckets, although I could certainly try a couple of plants and see how they fare.
That is a very good idea with the greens. I have the same problem with slugs in my garden as well.
And the mention of lowbush blueberry makes me think of lingonberry. I have a couple of plants in the ground, but it seems that the ground is to sandy for them, as I almost lost a plant during a period of drought last year. I just need to get better at propagating them. So far neither layering nor cuttings have worked for me. But I keep trying.

[Earl]

dwarf tomatoes...determinate, any size and any color available just like indeterminates now....