Growing Fruit Trees in Containers

When I was younger I remember my grandmother growing an orange tree in a 5 gallon bucket.  She enjoyed it as a houseplant, but I'm sure it never yielded any fruit.  We were in rural Missouri mind you...so orange trees were a novelty to me.  Now I live in Florida and it's difficult to drive anywhere in rural areas of Central Florida without seeing an orange grove at some point during the trip.

I was searching around on the Internet for ideas to grow food in my backyard and I kept running into references to growing fruit trees in containers.  The University of Florida IFAS Extension has a detailed article explaining some of the in's and out's.


Besides the obvious advantage of being portable, using containers to grow trees is also advantageous if you have poor soil conditions or unfavorable conditions during certains times of the year. They can be strategically pruned to keep the trees a more manageable size. In smaller backyards, using containers is a viable method to have several types of fruit trees within a small area.

According to the IFAS Extension website,  most commercial potting soil is suitable, but a favorite soil recipe includes "a mixture of 1 part sand, 1 part peat and 1 part bark, perlite or vermiculite will also serve quite well".

Part of my future gardening plans include growing blackberries and this container method sounds like something I should try.

I am unsure whether it has a lot of information on fruit trees specifically, but I found a book by Stella Otto titled The Backyard Orchardist that looks promising for backyard growers.

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