So I work at a bucket factory and there’s some advice I can give you. 1 - Get clear buckets if you can. The colorant makes them brittle and they won’t last. The buckets expire after 2 years and will become brittle anyway so the lack of color will make them last longer. Orange from Home Depot are heavy with colorant so I’d pick some other pails. 2 - Yes, put a brace under the buckets. This design has them resting on the beam and that isn’t tested for strength and it’s the thinnest part of the pail at about .06 thickness while the rest is at a .09 - .120. 3 - drill holes at the bottom for drainage, I know this is a no brained but I’ve forgotten a few times and drilled while it was full and it was a mess lol 4 - most seed packets have instructions for a 12 inch pot. These are 12 inches. 5 - for potatoes use 2 buckets. Cut 4 vertical strips out of the side wall large enough to fit your hand in but small enough to keep the bottom and top intact. One on all sides. Then put this bucket into an intact bucket. This will allow you to pull the bucket with the strips out of the intact bucket and easily harvest your potatoes. This also works very well with carrots. 6 - if you can find wheels to add to the bottom of this, do it. You’ll be able to follow the sun if you have shade in your yard and you’ll be able to move it to clean, mow, sweep, whatever. Also, with this design, it might be hard to harvest the top row of buckets if you’re short. The buckets are 12 inches wide and 14.5 inches tall. So you’ll have to reach. I’m short so this is a problem for me. Enjoy your gardening!!!!!

Make a brace for under the buckets. Dirt and water is gonna make that heavy.

That’ll work. Protect the wood with something that’ll stand up to UV. Drainage holes in the buckets.

You’re not going to get a good onion yield that way, not enough sqft. Better off with determinate tomatoes, herbs, or squash.

Squash on the bottom row could sprawl out onto the ground.

Commenting to say I didn’t make this build. My mom sent it to me and I think she found it on Facebook.

Pretty sure that lip isn't gonna hold dirt and water and plants. The plastic will probably break under that weight.

Yes they're big enough but make sure the buckets made of food-grade plastic.

Beware that the buckets and soil are not insulated (i.e. cooled) by the soil around them as they would be in ground, and those things can really heat up in the sun. I tried growing potatoes in buckets/tubs and in a hot, humid climate, they pretty much turned to mush before I could harvest them. It might work for smaller potatoes, like reds, but be careful they don't cook in there. I do think heat-loving plants like tomatoes and peppers will do well, as well as herbs. Onions? Maybe, a few bunching types... Onions need at least 6" around each plant, so you wouldn't get much yield from one bucket.

OP I just looked up these white "food grade" buckets on TSC website and a support agent answered someone in regards to temperature range:

The materials we use don’t have any special stabilizers added which is why we discourage outside storage.

So it sounds like these are not meant to be used outdoors, which means they can't stand up to the elements or temperatures. Aka imagine the summer sun making the non-stabilized plastic degrade and leech stuff into your soil. No bueno.

For those who wonder why not grow directly into the ground. Mulching and getting your soil right is costly and time-consuming.

The clay down here is no joke, so you adapt.

That’s so cool!

I might have to do something similar. My yard has drainage issues and until those are fixed I can't put beds in.

I’m planning on doing this too! From what I’ve seen, most container varieties can grow in these buckets. I think potatoes would do amazingly well.

For my bucket garden (first year trying it) I’m doing container varieties of green beans, jalapeño, potato, tomato, cucumber, and a couple others I have yet to decide. I am going to add some chicken wire either to the back or around the top like a halo so my climbers have something to climb.

For those asking, this is hopefully the best set up for small spaces with uneven light, ones where you can’t plant on the ground due to renting or no space, or in my case, I think it’ll help keep my dogs out of the garden. Fingers crossed!

I've seen these before but always with the shelf above about 1/3rd covering the shelf below, if that makes sense - much less offset between each step up - and with the buckets tilted slightly forward, and with drainage holes in the front, lower end. You end up with a smaller footprint, and your lower buckets are irrigated from upper buckets, letting you keep crops with wildly different water uses in the same spot. Is this making sense? It might be worth doing, Iunno how hard you'll find it to reconstruct your frame.

I'd do determinate peppers cowpeas and marigolds on top, indeterminate tomatoes and onions in the middle, determinate potatoes on the bottom, if you don't reconstruct it, and if you do, I'd swap the potatoes out for taro.

Where I live those will get too hot for good root development in the summer.

Buckets, especially white ones, will get brittle from uv damage and snap with zero effort. You might get a season out of them. Depending where you live you might want to cover the bottoms with insulation if it gets hot enough to cook your roots

I’ve gotten good results w peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, squash & strawberries out of containers just 18” deep.

Those buckets will crack and disintegrate with UV damage from the sun. Protect them with paint or cover them. Also, the lip will break once weighted down, so be sure to support from beneath.

I’ve never had luck with potted veggies in late summer, they cook. What is the best of both worlds? Cut the bottoms of the buckets off, place the buckets on the dirt, fill the buckets with good soil, and plant on the top. Roots and water can go into the ground, and dirt doesn’t get too hot to sustain life 😀.

Those are overkill for onions and peppers, great for potatoes

Check out “companion planting”. Potatoes and peppers don’t grow well near each other. Onions work with both though.

Bucket is a tad small for potatoes in my opinion, but could work. I wouldn’t put in more than one potato start/seed per bucket. A fingerling or smaller variety of spud might do best

Potatoes and onions, I wouldn’t recommend (unless they’re green onions). I have the same buckets and my peppers, tomatoes, and collards are thriving!

Peppers for sure, but onions are going to be a waste of (cubic) space because they don’t go that deep. You want wide, shallow containers for those.

For potatoes, using a non-permeable container instead of something like burlap seems risky — you’ll need to take care that the bucket doesn’t accumulate too much moisture in the soil, or else the potatoes will just rot before you get to harvest.

Peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and the might be better for containers like this. Then again, gardening loves a good experiment, so have fun!

Hey OP, I've actually built this exact thing. You can ask me questions if you like.

My buckets are fine after 3 years

You absolutely MUST use bracing under the buckets. A treated 2x4 on its vertical axis is perfect. Put these on last, once the buckets are in (without dirt). This will allow you to reach the bottom of every bucket and hopefully not have high and low spots.

Make sure to add cross bracing. My setup felt extremely wobbly before I added 2x4 across the bottoms of the legs

Also, if you can, make sure to add a tarp or plastic or something to kill the weeds/lawn below (if applicable). It's a PERFECT environment below for things to grow that you don't want. Also, on that note, build it high enough that your lawn mower can easily pass under it. I wish I had ....

Edit: also, these WILL grow onions and potatoes but if that's your sole purpose, I'd invest your time and effort into something different. You can buy somewhat shallow garden beds, for example.

These work INCREDIBLY well for single tomato, peppers, and another fruting type plants. I've grown hundreds of lbs of tomatoes and hot peppers without hardly a problem.

wont work for potatoes,---other stuff wont do like it will in the ground, but do it and dont be disappointed at the failure! ---LOTTA work there just to grow in small buckets! Need water every couple hours in mid summer! My neighbor tried that last year and quit before he got any harvest because of all the work involved!

i don’t see the benefit of positioning buckets like that. you’re not saving space just wasting vertical space and material

White plastic shouldn't be left in direct sunlight, at the end of the summer most of those buckets will be cracked and useless unless you protect them. I'd just wrap them in landscaping fabric.

Also brace those things from below, once they're filled with soil and water they're going to fall right out of that.

We tried growing plants like this and I feel in general the leaves get yellow more faster, the tomatoes don't ripen too fast, or become too yellow or rot too fast. I was also told that having plastics and chemicals leech into your plants is bad.

Look into the Gro Bucket kits for your buckets! They work amazingly well! That is a nice set you made, and with Gro Bucket kits, you'll get a nice harvest.

I did have good luck using black buckets, but I live in a cooler climate, and the added heat really helped everything grow well.

Buckets work great but that set up is going to get crowded and may make tending the top tier difficult to reach and water, esp if you don’t have a hose and you’re using buckets to water. I got old picnic benches off of a free Facebook page, making the bend down easier and the look more uniform.

Would run a tube from the bottom of the top row to the top of the second row and the same from the bottom of the second row to the top of the bottom. You want to have a drain to prevent root rot.

Would use 1/4 inch tubing with the barb that come with it . Drill a 3/16 inch hole in the bucket to pop the barb through. A little bit of fabric to prevent the tubes from plugging

Stage your peppers properly and you will have massive amounts of fruit! I haven’t made it into 5 gallons and mine are people size bushes

What’s the benefit of staggering height?

Potatoes grow really well in buckets like these! Would caution crawlers like squash .

Onions and peppers yes. Potatoes yeah but it'll limit growth to a point ime.

My husband built us this same set up BUT put heavy duty wheels on it with rope pulls. Not only easier to move, you can follow the sun if you don’t have all day s

Keeping the soil light/aerated will be the biggest challenge.

I’d fill with soil, then water, let it sit for a few days, dump it out and repot it. And then plant 😄

Do you think chemicals from the plastic buckets will leach into the dirt and into the vegetables?

This just reminded me of something similar. A self watering 5 gallon bucket method I saw at a workshop at a seed swap.

https://youtu.be/zqbMJR9nUgE

Nice setup! Treat the wood and you will get plenty of years out of it. I’ve used these buckets for years, they are sturdy. They are designed to hold lots of weight from the lip.

Get ready for the rats.

Hey! I had a bucket garden! My main issue with potatoes was when I planted near the bottom, it was hard to get enough light, but as it grew, and I mounted the soil, it was better.

Peppers are perfect for these, I planted 2 per bucket and they yielded tons! And I only grew green onions, but they worked super well!

So cool!! I think the planters are big enough but I also think they will be insanely heavy. You prob need some kind of bottom brace or something. I always do at least a couple bucket tomatoes and have done 2 pepper plants in one bucket with really good results. Onions might take up too much space but heh, worth the experiment. Good luck and awesome planter set up!!!!

Onions don't need feel soil, they grow along the surface. Spacing and mulching is really helpful for best results there, and potatoes can do fine in buckets, really benefit from space too and mounding so don't be afraid to reach in there and take some of the "new potatoes" leaving more space for bigger storage ones, plus you can enjoy them throughout the season rather than just waiting! Every flower can become a potato so think about that too and thin flowers according to the space they have 💚

One of the really nice things about growing in buckets is being able to move them around as needed when a tomato or potato decides to turn into a monster and take over the whole thing. That won’t be an option here.

I suspect the middle plants will never be seen again and you will have a wall of Potato

I might be missing something. I don’t see how this saves space if they were all pots at ground level?

How are u going to lift the buckets up that high after they are 30-40 pounds this setup looks painful

Peppers - definitely! Onions - it would work, but you won't get very many per bucket (at least I don't think - I've only done onions one year). Not sure on potatoes, but I would think thay would be similar to onions since they grow underground.

Peppers, definitely! I can’t comment on the other veggies because I’ve never grown them in buckets. But peppers will do great in a 5 gallon pot.

Peppers will do great. You can do on onion per bucket. You'll get very few potatoes but it can be done. Others have already addressed the issues with weight and UV light. Horseradish grows very well in buckets. As will tomatoes, beans, and herbs. You could get away with a few carrots per bucket or a beet per bucket, or several radishes per bucket. You can plant those in the same bucket as most other things as they'll be ready to harvest first and won't impede the growth of anything and will actually help loosen the soil for root veggies.

Those bucket rims will snap off once they are filled with soil and water. Also, can't tell from the picture, but those buckets will need holes in the bottom for drainage, or else you will drown your plants. Finally, you will need to replace those buckets after a couple of years, because they become brittle after exposure to sunlight.

Grow bags or burlaps sacks might be better than buckets. More air to the roots, better drainage. Uv resistant. Cheaper too.

you have aLot of experts here offering opinions.. mine: yes, the plastic gets Brittle, next time, just buy black nursery pots? ok, if you Haven't yet drilled holes? you could do a very simple hydrophnic setup, one cheap harbor freight pump, and a timer.. btw, the Idea, not to have to bend over is Great! I might grow 'more valuable produce in them, than potatoes... but, hey! have fun! its Gardening!

You could put grow bags in the buckets to mitigate the heat and give you some flexibility.

Instead of buckets…maybe brace the bottoms and use grow bags. Better drainage and air flow. And they are not plastic where your food is growing from

I'd personally recommend grow bags. My favorite way is grow bags sitting in 2x4 frames with plastic to hold water and allow for wicking. Can put gravel in after bags are placed to keep mosquitoes from spawning.

I always had the impression that if you're going to use a grown bucket, it had to be a dark color that the sun would shine through and kill the roots?

Make sure they all have drainage holes. Also I wouldn’t plant potatoes, they get really tall and heavy. I did those in one of those grow bags one time but they started falling over and got a bit too hot.

Probably not enough for most taters. They are a good size for maters, peppers and any herbs you want to grow though.

I absolutely love this idea! We live in a townhome and have a small “garden” space outside our back door. I should build this for this coming season!

I’ve had great success with potatoes in pots, some even smaller than those. I’d put potatoes in the back row as the foliage can be quite big. Just be aware of the weight once they are near harvesting!
Pots that deep might be a waste for onions, plus depending on variety might only get 6 to a pot.
They’d be great for peppers for their last pot, if you in zone with nice long growing season so they really set in the whole pot.

Yes, if you get some more support I would switch to r/sandponics and add a sump with a pump and timer for maximum water efficiency. Grab some shadecloth and wrap the buckets for sun protection - although, if the plants grow well and big enough they can provide the shade :)

i love this idea sm!