If you love zucchini and feel that you’ll never be able to grow fresh zucchini at home due to your home’s limited garden space, think again. While these garden veggies do require the proper amount of room to grow, growing them on a patio or porch container garden is possible. Learn how to grow zucchini in a pot, what they require for optimal growth, and ways to prepare them while cooking.
Nothing is more gratifying than producing your own food at home, whether you enjoy growing tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, or zucchini plants. While it’s easy to get intimidated by the whole gardening process, growing food is actually fairly straightforward as long as you understand what your plants need to grow healthy and strong.
We often think of a large backyard when considering growing vegetables and fruits. However, container growing is an excellent alternative, even if you live in an urban setting.

Container Gardening with Zucchini
There is a wide range of veggies that grow easily in a pot, and zucchini is one of them. Plant them in a large enough container, give them some TLC, and they reward you with a wonderful harvest at the end of the growing season.
If you’ve been putting off growing zucchini at home because you have a small space, it’s time to get planting.
Like many other garden vegetables, the many kinds of zucchini are happy growing just about anywhere, as long as you provide them with the right conditions.
Find out how to grow zucchini in the proper pot size and potting soil on your patio or porch in a full sun area.
Discover what this summer squash wants to flourish and how to care for them while growing zucchini in pots. Explore a delicious zucchini recipe after you harvest zucchini.
What to Know about Growing Zucchini at Home
As easy as it is to sow seeds in a pot, water the plant, and go on with your daily life, zucchini plants need the right soil type, pot size, and sunshine to thrive. Here are some helpful tips for growing zucchini at home and growing squash in containers whether they are inside or out.
Zucchini plants (Cucurbita pepo) do not require overly rich dirt. However, they grow ideally in a soil pH of around 6.5 with organic matter and consistent moisture.
Like when you grow cucumber in pots, avoid using garden soil since it may contain weed seeds and pests that cause havoc to your plants as they grow. Like most other garden plants, zucchini loves growing in six to eight hours of sunlight daily.
For container planting, choose a pot with drainage holes to prevent the dirt from becoming soggy and make sure it is large enough to accommodate the plant’s root system. No one wants rotten zucchini from overwatering.
Pick a container with a minimum depth of 12-inches and a diameter of at least 24-inches. Any pot works, whether a plastic five gallon container or a half whiskey barrel.
How to Grow Zucchini in a Pot
Seed-planting is an inexpensive way to grow veggies as long as you plant them at the right time to encourage germination. Here is how to plant zucchini in pots by starting them from seeds outside.
Two weeks after the last frost, fill the appropriate sized pot with a lightweight, well-draining potting mix that contains peat, perlite, or vermiculite.
Sow two to three seeds an inch deep in the center of the container with a couple of inches of space between them and water them lightly for a week or two to encourage germination.
Once the seeds sprout, it’s time to thin out the seedlings. Pull out the weakest, leaving one strong seedling in the pot.
Set the container in the patio or porch area where the plant gets at least six hours of sun daily, and water the young plants as needed.
How to Care for Your Plants While Growing Zucchini in Pots
After sowing zucchini seeds and watching them germinate into seedlings, it’s time to give them a little TLC. Here is how to care for your plants while growing zucchini in pots.
After your zucchini sprouts and you thin the seedlings, spread mulch around the base of the plant to hold in moisture and prevent weeds.
Water your plant whenever the top two inches of soil is dry and feed it a well-balanced fertilizer with potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus every four weeks.
If you plant vining zucchini varieties, position a tomato cage or trellis in the pot at planting time. Dwarf or bush types like Eight Ball usually do not need support.
A zucchini plant has both female and male flowers, and pollinators are necessary to produce fruit.
However, it’s easy to pollinate them yourself by transferring pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers with a Q-tip or paintbrush.
Keep an eye out for yellow zucchini leaves, squash bugs, vine borers, cucumber beetles, and other garden pests. Avoid using harmful pesticides that kill beneficial insects, which reduce your zucchini crop. Instead, remove the bugs by hand or spray them with a garden hose.
Powdery mildew and blossom end rot are common issues with zucchini plants. Blossom end rot occurs from a calcium deficiency in the dirt, and inserting anti-acid tablets in the soil usually fixes the problem.
Powdery mildew is a disease that is avoidable with adequate spacing, airflow, and sunshine. It’s essential to prune diseased or damaged stems and discard them away from the container garden as soon as you discover them.
Making a Delicious Side Dish with Fresh Garden Zucchini
There are many ways to prepare your veggies after planting zucchini in pots and harvesting the summer squash, from zucchini bread to zucchini marinara. Keep zucchini fresh for several days in the fridge crisper drawer.
We enjoy baking zucchini sticks with Parmesan as a healthy and nutritious side dish.
Quarter each zucchini lengthwise and place them on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Combine the Parmesan cheese, oregano, thyme, basil, and garlic powder in a small bowl and add salt and pepper to taste.
Drizzle olive oil over the zucchini, sprinkle the cheese and herbs over the top, and bake them in a 350°F oven for fifteen minutes. Turn the oven to broil and cook them two to three minutes more until golden brown.
While it’s true that zucchini takes up a bit of space while it grows, it’s possible to grow it in a container garden if you provide it with the right-sized pot and give it some support as it matures.
Add some tender loving care, and your zucchini plant grows flowers and produces fruits for harvesting.

We hope that learning how to grow zucchini in a pot provides your dinner table with fresh veggies at the end of the season, and we’d love it if you’d share our zucchini container gardening guide with your family and friends on Pinterest and Facebook.