Container gardening, and raised bed gardening is quickly growing in popularity due to people wanting to garden in their backyards, on their porches and more. These areas don’t haven nearly as much space as sprawling farms, so space is important. One important factor about this is how deep you should have your soil! Containers come in all shapes and sizes, so you want to make sure that you keep your soil deep enough for what you plan on planting!
So how deep should a container garden be? For plants to stay healthy, you should plan on getting some containers that can handle at least 12 inches in depth of soil! Flowers specifically you will want to utilize a minimum of 8 inches, and vegetables generally require more at 12 inches.
How deep you should have your container garden for vegetables
Vegetables have a considerable amount of root system to stay healthy as they grow! Because of this they need to be able to spread their roots out extremely far, and to avoid root balling (and killing them) you will want to make sure you have at least 12 inches of depth to the soil. On top of this, you need to make sure you have good drainage to avoid overwatering of the plants.
Depth for flowers to stay healthy
Flowers don’t require quite as much depth for their roots as vegetables, so you can generally get away with less soil! This means that 8 inches of soil will do just fine. However make sure to follow the instructions on your seed packet for sun, as flowers can need a lot of that.
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Why should you care how deep your planter box is?
If you aren’t careful, depth of your soil can mean the difference between your plants living, and dying! Root balling is a serious problem that can cause your plants to wither away without you even knowing why. Keeping your soil deep enough is imperative to keeping this from happening.
Conclusion
So there you have it! To keep your plants healthy, I would generally recommend staying safe and keeping at least 12 inches of soil in your containers. This way you know this won’t be an issue for your plants for the fun months to come!
