Container Garden Update — August 20, 2017

-A.J.

Fall is approaching. There are lots of tomatoes but they’d better hurry up!

The Romas. To be fair, we harvested the 8 ripest fruits last night, so these are all leaning green:

This is going to be the biggest Black Krim we’ve ever seen:

This is our first year with the Old German variety. This one is close to ready, it’s supposed to get some amount of red to go with all that orange:

We harvested around three pounds of Oregon Springs last night. There’s still a crazy amount of fruit on the plants. Here’s a picture from the west facing “front”:

And the east facing “back”:

The south side looks more or less the same, but short of some amazing gymnastics that picture isn’t happening.

One of the bell pepper plants:

This is why we commited a full box to Carmens:

It seems lots of people love growing Jimmy Nardellos. We grew 1/2 box (3 plants) for the first time this year, and I have high hopes:

The cucumbers are having a good year. I’d guess we’ve already harvested 20 pounds or so:

By contrast, the Tromboncino are underperforming. Which is odd, because the leaves look relatively good this year, but the fruits are doing poorly. I doubt we’ll get 20 pounds:

Here’s why we do basil from starts, and grow it in Earthboxes. We harvest from this box daily and it just keeps bouncing back and producing even more:

This is the basil we started from seed and grew in a whiskey barrel. It’s basically the same number of plants as are in the previous photo. The beans were planted recently and they’re going to outgrow the basil. Note the Earthbox of basil on the back left:

The Minnesota Midget Melons. They’re not ripening yet. I counted seven of them today on our one plant:

The filet beans are still producing well. They’re in a whiskey barrel. They’re not picky:

An overview:

Note the clear containers tucked between the Earthboxes. They contain winter seedlings, which will be divided around the whiskey barrels, Earthboxes, and the salad table.  Here are Arugula, Winter Cress, and Mache. The Mache is off to a slow start:

Dill, Parsley, and Leeks:

Three other containers have Spinach, Chard, Romaine, Cilantro, more Mache, Scallions, Shallots, etc.

I “prettied up” the salad table. It’s right by the front door. The stakes were crooked and the shade cloth looked “thrown together”.  It’s not perfect now but it’s way more presentable. Step 1:

I then ran a piece of shade cloth over the top and down the side that faces the house. The south-facing “front” went on last. There are two clips on the left side that can be used to get access to the plants:

The empty spaces will receive many of the seedlings from the back yard. There are also baby Cilantro and Miner’s lettuce on the 2nd tier.

From the north side “back”:

We planted the peas about 17 days ago. Then we had a couple of 90 degree days. The peas seem to have tolerated it well.

Next year I’m going succession plant romaine at least weekly. This once a month thing I’ve been trying leaves gaps in production. We’d had lots of salads the last 10 days though.

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Visit Dave at Ourhappyacres, host of Harvest Monday.