If you live in an apartment or are short on gardening space, you know how frustrating it can be to come up with urban gardening solutions. Did you know that there are various varieties of fruits that grow hardily in a container? You can have sweet treats at your fingertips by planting edibles in containers. Few things are more satisfying than fresh, juicy fruit right off the vine. Now you can grow fruit on your porch or deck in containers for your own small-space fruit garden.
Here are some of our favorite fruits to grow in containers and the best way to care for them:
Bushel and Berry® Baby Cakes®
is incredibly compact yet produces just as heavily as a full-sized shrub. Delicate white flowers become dark, delicious berries and stand out against attractive green foliage. Best of all, Baby Cakes® often offers a second harvest in fall! 
This dwarf shrub is nicely branched and simply covered in blooms beginning in late spring and continuing into summer. By midsummer the berries have arisen, held in big sprays near the top of the plant, which simplifies the harvesting. And there are no thorns to make picking the fruit difficult. You can plant Baby Cakes® fearlessly near a heavily trafficked area, secure in the knowledge that passersby will not be stabbed by prickles and thorns!
Just 3 to 4 feet high and wide, Baby Cakes™ is part of the Bushel and Berry® series of compact, ornamental edibles. The fruit is large, sweet, and juicy. And the foliage stays green and fresh until winter. So easy, so attractive season after season!
Bushel & Berry® Jelly Bean®
By midsummer this dwarf shrub offers some of the sweetest blueberries out there. They are so sugary and sweet in fact that they taste more like blueberry jam! This petite plant is a feast for the eyes even when it’s not a feast of delectable berries. 
In spring It showcases adorable bell-like white blooms and elongated foliage that shows red tinges in colder climates. Its compact size makes it ideal for container growing and creating small hedges or lined pathways full of delicious edibles. This shrub does best in full sun or slight shade. Plant it in a container on your porch and enjoy delectable berries right outside your own door! Try Jelly Bean® and we bet you’ll keep coming back for more!
Bushel and Berry® Raspberry Shortcake
A thorn-less variety with full-sized, yummy red fruit on plants that reach just 2 to 3 feet high and wide and have a dense, compact, and tightly mounded habit. Say goodbye to rangy canes that flop all over the place and to punctured hands at harvest time! Raspberry Shortcake® looks as good as its full-sized, bright red fruit tastes!
These berries have a flavor described as “vanilla essence,” very sweet and meltingly tender. You can enjoy handfuls straight from the patio or even the urban balcony with Raspberry Shortcake®! And the plant always looks good, remaining dense and healthy. 
Caring for Raspberry Shortcake® is easy. It loves well-drained, neutral soil (pH 6.5 – 7.5 is best) in full sunshine everywhere but the hottest climates. If you are growing it in a container, pick a big one — anything 24 inches in diameter or larger is preferred, since this perennial will keep setting new canes and spreading.
Feed Raspberry Shortcake® with a balanced fertilizer at the beginning of spring and again later in the season. Water it daily in containers. When winter arrives, it will go dormant, and should be left alone. The following spring, you’ll begin to see green growth. Midway through spring, when the new growth is well-established, cut away any stems that do not show new growth. That’s all there is to it!
Citrus Meyer Lemon
Is compact enough even for urban balconies and limited-space gardens, Meyer Lemon will begin bearing large, juicy, thick-skinned fruit at an early age and just keep producing!
Even if there were no fruit at all, this evergreen would be attractive enough to grow as an ornamental. The leaves are lush and glossy, the small white flowers (arising indoors in late winter, just when the house needs some color and scent!) are intensely fragrant, and the habit is upright and well branched. Depending on the size container and pruning you give it, this tree could reach 6 to 8 feet high and 4 to 8 feet wide but can also be kept smaller. 
The lemons are the real prize of this tree, however. They arise in clusters of about 6 after the blooms pass. Thin immediately to about 2 or 3 per cluster, unless you want more plentiful but much smaller fruits. The fruit is very juicy, with an extra-thick skin that’s great for zesting. Not just ornamental, these are delicious lemons you will find yourself slicing, zesting, and squeezing all year!
Give this tree plenty of sunshine and water indoors and out. When you bring it inside for the winter, place it before your sunniest window and rotate it frequently to get sunlight to all the leaves. It will reward you with a whole season of beauty before it’s time to take it outdoors again for the warm weather!