When there’s no room in the yard for a vegetable patch or flowerbed, its time to try container gardening and turn tight spaces into the perfect place for vine-ripened tomatoes or brightly colored blooms.

Practically any container can be used for gardening, said Dr. Wayne Porter, a horticulturalist with Mississippi State Extension Service.

“No one container type is going to work better than the other. You as the gardener are going to have to work and adjust the soil mix and watering,” Porter said during a statewide teleconference broadcast Thursday at the Warren County Extension Office.

Porter displayed photos of boots, shoes, lawn chairs and toilets turned into planters. Even a wax coated cardboard box can be a great spot to grow the perfect lettuce and cabbage, he said.

Tomatoes are one of the most popular container crops, but can also be one of the trickiest, Porter said.

“There is somebody somewhere in the state growing tomatoes in a container right now trying to have the first ripe tomatoes in the neighborhood,” Porter said.

Getting perfect vine-ripe tomatoes requires more room for the plant flourish than most gardeners realize, he said.  Except for cherry tomatoes, the plants require a container about the size of a 5-gallon bucket, he said.

Almost any plant — from the finest flowers to the tallest trees — will grow in a container if the space is large enough.

Most people just don’t have space for tree-sized containers, so Porter usually recommends smaller vegetables, citrus trees or ornamental flowers.

“There are very few plants that cannot successfully be grown in a container,” Porter said.

The perfect container garden always starts with high-quality potting soil. Dirt from the yard should not be used, no matter how rich the soil is, he said.

“When you put these things into a container, you’re going to introduce insect problems and disease. They are just going to multiply in the container and be worse than they are in the garden,” Porter said.

And don’t make the mistake of thinking that container plants need less attention than garden plants.

“It’s just like having a child or pet in the house. You have to water and feed them on a regular basis,” he said. “You can’t just go on vacation for a week and come back and expect them to be fine.”