by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 30, 2014 post here.

The final harvest took place last year on October 7. This year it happened on September 28. Last year we got 226 pounds out of the EarthBoxes. Yesterday’s harvest brings us to 270 pounds of produce for 2014. Improvement!

Here are yesterday’s twenty-three pounds of peppers:

Overall we harvested 31 pounds of peppers in 2014. Next to the cat are ten pounds of King of the North. In the center sheet tray are two pounds of hot Pasilla peppers. Last year’s final pepper harvest is pictured below:

By weight it’s about 50% more peppers, though to be fair we also allocated more space this time. I think that 2014 shows more “red” as well.

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks breaking everything down. Last night we borrowed SeattleAuthor’s dehydrator for the Pasilla and Thai Hot peppers. He’s right — they’re so aggressively toxic that the dehydrator needs to go outside, otherwise stinging fumes fill the air.

Overall it was a pretty successful year. As a group everything that ripens, ripened better, especially the tomatoes. The yield was up somewhat when looking at 1-to-1 comparisons. Even though six of the 12 boxes fell over at some point the plants were still more productive. And we learned more things that we can apply to year three, such as the importance of support for the boxes…

“Recap” posts coming soon.

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 22, 2013 post here.

It seems like only yesterday…. Here’s July 24:

And today:

The cucumbers are behind me for this picture. Over the last few days we’ve pulled the tomatillos, Romas, Krims, and Oregon Spring tomatoes.

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — September 21, 2014” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 15, 2013 post here.

35 pounds of stuff today, 47 pounds for the week(!) We’re now over 200 pounds of produce for the year.

Today’s harvest. It mostly covered the dining room table:

Tuesday looks paltry by comparison:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — September 14, 2014” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

September 8, 2013 post here.

The garden looks quite a bit different this year. The Gypsy peppers are much riper:

The white stuff is diatomaceous earth. The bugs didn’t attack the Gypsy peppers so maybe it’s helping.

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — September 7, 2014” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

Alternate titles:  “Dominoes!”   or …  “Total Carnage!”

We chose not to add any supplementary support to the tomato cages this year. Last year, everything was fine, why wouldn’t it be this year?

Because today it got windy. Then it got really windy. Windy enough that I went to the back window to check on the plants…

I watched the garden as the wind howled from a strange direction. The zucchini trellis toppled over. It struck the nearest tomato cage, which collapsed into the next cage…:

Then 10,000 houses lost power.

With help, we lifted everything to vertical. I tied the cages to cinder blocks, then installed the pvc supports that I had thought were important last year, but not this year…

Another view:

We lucked out — everything landed on everything else. I doubt we lost more than a couple of pounds of produce, though it’s going to be “fried green tomatoes week”. We got a full sheet tray of not-ripe fruit. It seems that none of the vines snapped, though we’ll know for sure soon.

It’s raining freakishly hard tonight. The thunder just made the cats scatter. The peppers were looking bedraggled after the wind, we’ll see what we have left tomorrow. It could have been much worse.

 

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

August 25, 2013 here for comparison.

Yesterday was a big “haircut day” for the tomatoes. As it turns out, at least one “haircut day” from last year was on August 25th. This year’s decision to give them a haircut was made without looking at last year’s notes. It’s interesting to me how closely the timing worked out.

It seems to me that the great majority of the mold on the tomato plants occurs on the “side shoots” — the leaf-only branches that are at a 90 degree angle to the main stem. The “sucker” branches (that come out of the side shoot/main stem intersection, and grow additional fruit), and the main stems are almost entirely mold free. This is true regardless of the location “side shoot”. The mold is both on exterior, well ventilated side shoots and on leaves that are buried in the interior of the leaf canopy. It’s like the plant figures that if it’s not a fruit producing node then it’s now time to shut down those natural defenses and spend that energy somewhere else.

Lots of pictures this week, mostly of denuded tomato plants.. starting with Wednesdays harvest:

Saturday. That’s a big tomatillo in the bottom right corner:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — August 24, 2014” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here.

Silly August 18, 2013 post here. (Includes two cat pics and must have been written on very little sleep.)

The plants continue to look more and more haggard as the fruit production ramps up. There’s now mold on the zucchini leaves, some of the tomato plants, and the Brussels Sprouts (of all things). SeattleAuthor shared the hypothesis that the mold may be partly due to the humidity we’ve been seeing. That’s possible — there’s a small holly tree start across the yard that is covered in mold too.

But the production is going gangbusters:

Monday the 11th:

Thursday the 14th:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — August 19, 2014” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here. July 28, 2013 post here for comparison.

We got tired of looking into the stacks of vegetables for the plant markers. (And tired of remembering which pepper was which.) We came up with this solution:

Continue reading “Container Garden Update — July 27, 2014” →

by A.J. Coltrane

Previous post here. July 7, 2013 update here. (The 2013 post is highlighted by the “zucchini breakage disaster”. And the fact that the post permalink says it’s the year “2103”. Oops. I started to make the same typo this time and caught myself.)

The zucchini have cleared the top of the trellis! I’m now trying to train them over the top and down the other side. We’ll see how that goes.

Continue reading “Container Garden Mini Update — July 7, 2014” →