Here's how it all took shape this year:
I usually order seedlings from Burpee, but there was a problem with the order this year so I was forced to buy the standards that my local nursery had available. Next year there'll be much more interesting tomatoes to report on, I promise.
I punched holes in the bottom of each trash can and used a few inches of pebbles at the bottom to help with drainage. For soil I used an equal mix of Gardener's Gold Potting Soil and Bumper Crop Soil Amendment. It cost a bloody fortune to get all of the cans filled but I don't expect to have to replace the soil again; in future years we'll just fortify the soil with compost (hopefully homemade at some point) and the expense will be minimal.
I mixed Osmocote into the first few inches of soil in the correct proportions for the type of vegetable or herb, and used Bone Meal to keep the blossom end rot away this year.
I've crossed all the "t"s and dotted all the "i"s that I can think of, and if this garden doesn't start producing, and quickly, then you can probably find me out back stomping my feet like a little kid. If it does start producing? Come get some tomatoes. I've got a feeling we're going to be overrun.
1 comment:
It looks like you probably are figuring it all out yourself, but just in case... one of my favorite books for the Fall season is all about growing food in cities or wherever you don't have hardly any space. I can't remember when it'll be out, maybe September or October. Anyway, I'll try to remember to send you a copy when it's finished. The author (R.J. Ruppenthal) has some neat ideas about helping get the most from containers and other limited spaces--though it looks like you already figured out the trick of doing "terracing" with your different sized containers. I like what you did with the trash cans. Wendy and I are thinking of growing some potato barrels, and using trash cans might be the way to go. That idea is from a different book we did that is just being printed now--the benefit being that potatoes are a pain to harvest even if you do have a yard, but in a big container, you can just dump the dirt and potatoes out onto a tarp, harvest, and then have an easy clean up. We'll see...
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