Back Again! Summer 2010

This summer the vegetables on my back deck are flourishing - the hot weather and sunshine has made it easy to take care of the plants and they are growing better than ever. I planted less variety and concentrated on my successes from last year. Lots of tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers. I have done very little maintenance on the plants except watering, of course. (I never even fertilized...) Now, we're eating salads every night and having regular batches of basil pesto.

My herbs - Basil, Thai Basil, Rosemary, Marjoram, and Nasturtium.

Waiting on the Big Boy to ripen - can't wait to try them!

I'm growing the heirloom San Marzano to try something fun. Look at the unique shape! Will these be as good as the ones grown in Italy? Is my Miracle Grow Container Mix equal to the volcanic soil at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius? One authentic Pizza Napoletana coming up. (Hopefully.)

Here is the surprise and mystery of the summer - the plant tag said I would be harvesting long red chili peppers, and instead these strange bulbous green things appeared. What to do?

There have been a couple disappointments - zucchini that flowers, but never makes a fruit and just flops around half-dead on the deck.

Another problem - one of my sungolds is actively dying from an unknown disease. Luckily I have another very healthy plant.

Lettuce! Love this container variety (Garden Babies Butterhead) - thanks Mom! It started out a little slower than the others, but soon caught up. It grows into a nice lettuce shape and looks very appealing in the container.

This Simpson Elite is a really nice looseleaf lettuce that tastes great on my (B)LTs.

And here we have the Burpee Bibb that grew very well, but just doesn't have the charisma of the Butterhead Babies!

Here is our new patio set shaded by the white pine.

A complete list of what I have growing:

2 Sungold

1 San Marzano

1 Big Boy

1 Celebrity

2 Serrano Peppers

2 Bulbous unknown peppers

4 Boston Pickling Cucumber

Basil

Thai Basil

Marjaram

Nasturtium

Zucchini

Cilantro (failure)

Garden Babies Butterhead Lettuce

Simpson Elite Lettuce

Burpee Bibb Lettuce

Lantana

Marigolds

Date of planting - late! About the third week of June. However, the plants seemed to catch up to last year without a problem.

Weather - nice! Hot and sunny.

Watering - consistently watering when needed - about every other day and sometimes every day.

Fertilizer - osmocote when planted.

No insecticides or fungicides sprayed.

Creatures of the Night

If you have a problem with an unidentified insect eating your vegetable plants, it may be a good idea to do a little investigation.  Every morning, upon examining my garden, I noticed large holes in the leaves of my Japanese eggplant and my basil.  So, I took a flashlight and went out there after dark to find the mysterious predator.  As you can see, these earwigs were not too hard to find and didn't seem concerned that their midnight meal was being watched under a spotlight.  They just calmly kept munching on the tasty eggplant leaves, making large holes, and destroying the plant.  Now, multiple sources have told me that earwigs do not eat green plants.  Hmmm... I think they're wrong.

Origami Peas

When the pea seeds sprouted and came up through the dirt, they emerged with their leaves perfectly folded.  As they started to grow, they opened up into intricately designed origami patterns.  It's not a Japanese crane, but maybe a peacock?

The carrots have finally come up also.  They are very fine, but if you look closely you'll see them.  These seedlings took much longer than the others that I planted.

Support for a Container Garden - Cages and Teepees

I am using a few different supports for my containers.  The first one is called the Ultomato tomato support and I am using it for three of my tomatoes - Brandywine, Sungold, and Husky Cherry Red.  The stakes are 5 ft tall and have adjustable side clips.  Once placed in the pot they offer about 4 ft of growing space.  

The second support is a teepee made of five 6 ft stakes.  I planted the peas in this pot and they should have almost 5 ft of climbing room.  

The third support is a regular tomato cage.  It is a heavy duty 54 inch cage, but I trimmed the legs down in order to make it fit into the pot.  I am using these cages for my patio and better bush tomatoes, both eggplants, and my yellow bell pepper.  

And the last support is a decorative metal spiral support for the cucumber.  It is 41 inches tall.

I used the largest tomato cages that I could find for my pots because they are made of thicker wire and seem much more sturdy.  But they were also much too tall for a container, so I cut the ends with a bolt cutter.  The bottom ring is now resting on the soil which also adds stability.  Now I'm ready for those tomatoes to really grow!  High winds and thunderstorms should not be a problem!  (If you do this, be careful with the bolt cutter because the metal pieces really fly off once they are cut -  I just closed my eyes and turned my head out of the way.  Some people may not agree, but I've noticed that the elements of excitement, danger and high adventure are definitely present in gardening!)

To make the teepee for my peas I fastened the stakes together at the top with a black zip-tie.

Here you can see most of the containers, and how it all looks together.

Pot Toes

Pot toes are these small plastic pieces that can be placed under containers.  They protect your deck (or any surface) from water damage that can occur.  In the past at the end of the season, I've found multiple dark brown rings staining the deck from my containers, so I decided to try these little gadgets this year.  Another function they have, which is very important, is to help the pots drain excess water out the bottom holes.  I don't want any root rot this summer!  I also like how they are pretty unobtrusive and don't interfere with my design.

Is the Garden in Yet?

Almost.  The vegetables that I had from the garden center are all planted.  Tomorrow I'll put in the seeds.  Then I'm sure I'll need to take another trip to the garden center - there may be room to squeeze in one more cherry tomato plant.  And maybe an eggplant?  The time consuming part of a container garden seems to be the transporting of the potting mix.  It's quite heavy to bring from the car, around the house, and up the stairs to the deck.  Then the soil has to be scooped into the pots until the bag is light enough to pour.  I may have to think of a different plan next year to save my back. 
Here's the lineup of pots.  Tomorrow I'll give all the details about what is actually planted.

Here are the herbs, the strawberries that you already saw, and in the background will be the English peas climbing up the teepee.  There's a chili pepper there too.


Spring container vegetable gardening has its challenges - time to relax!  

One Strawberry Pot, two tiny strawberries

I planted Everbearing Strawberry plants into this 4 gallon strawberry pot in the hopes of having a few berries on my cereal each morning.  This strawberry plant is a perennial that is supposed to produce all summer.  Strawberry pots are designed to be planted mostly at the top.   Then the plant's runners travel down to the openings in the pot, where they form a new plant that sprouts out the side.  Conveniently, the berries hang right out there just waiting to be picked.  I decided to help the pot out a little, since I'm getting a late start this spring.  I bought three 4-packs from the garden center and put some of the plants in the upper holes, and 4 little plants in the very top.  I'll let the bottom holes fill in by themselves.  Maybe these plants will last the winter and next year I'll have early spring strawberries.

Spring Planting

There's a lot of work to do today!  I'm starting a vegetable container garden on the deck in my backyard in Michigan.  It has been cold this spring, but I'm hoping that it's still early enough in the season to get a good harvest later this summer.  We plan to grow tomatoes, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, chili peppers, eggplant, strawberries, English peas, radish, lettuce, carrots, and herbs - with lots of basil.  

I started out by making a sun chart of the deck.  Each hour I recorded the areas of direct sun, dappled sun, and shade.  Then I counted up the hours for each area and selected the proper plant for the site.  Seven hours of direct sunlight is about the most I'm going to get on the deck, but I should be able to grow tomatoes and other vegetables with high sun requirements.  I chose to put my vegetables on the deck because growing in the yard presents some big problems - the sunny sites are in areas that just aren't suitable for a garden, and the lawn is decidedly non-organic!

Then I went and got my pots - that was fun!  I tried to select the largest pots since I've heard that the vegetables will do much better.  This way the roots have room to grow to their full capacity, the soil will retain moisture, and there will be more nutrients for the plants.  In my selection I was  a little limited by my aesthetic preferences - there are plenty of really big containers that would be great for plants, but I prefer have something that will look pretty!  For the largest pots I went with fiberglass because it's lightweight and it looks natural.  I also have terracotta and wood.  I prefer not to use plastic if possible, but did buy some long plastic window box containers to hang on the railings - these will be for different varieties of lettuce.  

Now it's time to go out and have some fun!