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.

Garden Log #3

The front yard garden bed was planted on July 12 with the following vegetables.

Seeds:

Kohlrabi Purple & White Vienna Blend (Brassica oleracea)

Radish French Breakfast (Raphanus sativus)

Turnip Purple Top White Globe (Brassica rapa)

Bok choy White Stem (Brassic rapa Chinesis Group)

These vegetables were chosen because of their short growing season and the limited amount of time left in Michigan before frost.

I also planted these transplants:

9 Cabbage Bonnie Hybrid

1 Sweet Banana Pepper

1 Mammoth Jalapeno

1 Jalapeno

2 California Green Pepper

3 Black Beauty Eggplant

1 Japanese Eggplant

28 Little Gem Lettuce

Butterhead lettuce transplanted on June 30

Herbs planted July 16:

Lemon Thyme

Silver-Edged Thyme

Chives

Greek Basil

Dill

Italian Parsley (4)

Rosemary

I also planted a variety of annual flowers in the bed including impatiens, marigolds, petunia, allysum, and vinca.

All transplants, except the lettuce, were fertilized with a sprinkle of time release fertilizer in the planting hole.

Go Ahead! Plant Vegetables in your Front Yard.

Having a container vegetable garden on your deck is a fun and convenient way to grow vegetables, however, the space limitations are one drawback to this method. Some gardeners may be compelled to start expanding their garden out into the yard so they can grow a greater variety of vegetables.

I found that it was easier to plant more vegetables in the garden beds that we already had in place, rather than creating a new area, and this happened to be in the front yard. It takes a little more consideration for design and plant type, but vegetables can be an attractive way to greet guests as they come up the walkway to your front door.

As you can see, we already had our foundation plantings in place - very respectable Stella d'Oro daylilies and evergreen shrubs. To liven up the area, I added a few stepping stones, some herbs and a variety of vegetables, and mixed it all together with some brightly colored annuals. Now, from a distance everything is pretty, and up close you can see that a gardener lives on the premises!

For a complete listing of what I planted see Garden Log #3.

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.

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!  

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!