Last year I grew some vegetables in 5 gallon pots on my sunny deck with poor success. I prepared the containers by cleaning, putting crumpled plastic bags in the bottom and then filling with a good soil mix. Plants had poor leaf color. The maturing tomatoes had the “dreaded black bottom”. Some of the peppers also had this disease. The cucumbers simply folded after the first wind.
More and more people are growing vegetables in containers. Five gallon pots can work well, but larger containers would be better. Half whiskey barrels or similar size containers would be a better choice.
The big mistake you made was putting plastic bags in the bottom of the container. Nothing should be put in the bottom of a container to restrict water drainage. Not plastic, not newspaper, not rocks or gravel, not broken clay pot pieces. The large holes in pots are needed so that water drains quickly. Anything you put in the bottom reduces drainage, even coarse materials like rocks and gravel.
When drainage is restricted, large soil pore spaces that normally contain air fill up with water. Roots need the oxygen in air to grow and thrive. With a restricted root system top growth will have poor color. Poor leaf color may also have been caused by inadequate fertilizer nutrients. Disease organisms thrive in wet soil. I suspect that root disease was a factor in your poor performance.
