Container Garden 2016: Week 14

WE WENT OUT TO DINNER TONIGHT…TO THE GARDEN! The main reason for having a vegetable garden is to eat what you grow, so we’ve been working on it!

We harvested our first TWO ball zucchinis last week!

Yes, they look like little green pumpkins. Zucchinis and pumpkins are both squashes though, so there should be some family resemblance. I think these have a really fun coloring. Definitely can’t get these at the grocery store.

I was inspired by their round shape to try stuffed zucchini. Usually stuffed zucchinis are described as being “boats” because the usual long zucchinis are used. But these round ball zucchinis worked really well. I scooped out their insides and diced it up with tomato, shrimp, and feta cheese. Added some Italian seasonings and spooned my filling back into the zucchinis and placed in an oiled glass pan. Topped it all with panko bread crumbs. As you can see, I had extra filling so I just baked it all together in the same pan.

They came out tender and tasty! Very good side dish to the shrimp scampi I also made tonight. That’s where our second garden veggie of the night appeared: fresh pea pods! I pick a handful of pea pods every other day now. Good for snacking and dinner!

So thank you Mother Nature for a delicious meal tonight. Our home-grown vegetables always seem to taste better than store-bought.

And we’re looking forward to more!

Our beefsteak tomato plants are starting to produce small green tomatoes.

Keeping an eye on our pepper plants. Our jalapeno plant had some blossoms earlier, but they dropped off and no peppers appeared. Not sure why. But this week it suddenly has new leaf growth, so maybe it’s starting to figure itself out. Our mini orange peppers are still really small plants, but they’re starting to have blossoms and it looks like there’s itty bitty peppers coming in behind.

Finally, we have baby green beans!

They’re so cute when they start coming in.

But they’re getting big fast!

I’m a little disappointed with our “flowers.” They came from Burpee’s birds and butterfly flower seed mix that I sprinkled in some pots. So far we’ve only had one plant flower. Everything else is growing, but not showing any signs of blooming soon. Sorry this photo is blurry. My camera doesn’t do well close up.

And a quick last minute update, here’s how our crazy hanging tomato plant is growing now. It’s finally been forced to grow down.

Everything else continues to get bigger and greener and foodier! And we lucked out with a surprise thunderstorm this evening, so I don’t have to water our plants tonight!

Container Garden 2016: Week 13

WE HAVE PEAS!

And they’re so yummy! I picked a whole handful today and we just ate them raw because they’re so good. The pea pods at the grocery store often have a little bitterness to them that our home-grown ones do not. Looking forward to many more in the coming weeks. The more you pick peas the more the plants produce, so we should be getting plenty!

Meanwhile other plants are working on getting veggies ready for harvest. We got our first small green cherry tomatoes this week…

the green beans now have blossoms…

the pepper plants also have blossoms…

and finally the zucchinis have beautiful orange blossoms and baby zucchinis!

Remember, these are ball zucchinis, which is why they’re so round.

That’s all I can report today. Lots of growing going on and now we’re getting into the best part: the eating!

Container Garden 2016: Week 12

JUST A QUICK UPDATE TODAY. The weather has been really hot and our plants are thriving. Some of them are getting so big!

I’m excited over how many have blossoms now because blossoms mean vegetables! Both of our cherry tomato plants, the jalapeno plant, and our peas have blossoms. And the pea blossoms are turning into itty bitty pea pods!

Super happy to be seeing peas now. This time last year a fungus killed all our pea vines, but this year they’re as tall as me and I’m sure within the week we’ll be harvesting our first pea pods. Exciting!

We’ve already been harvesting lettuce and enjoying the fruits of our labors with healthy salads. It’s easy to eat wholesome food when it’s growing just outside your door!

Because it’s been so hot it’s hard to keep everything watered adequately and cheaply. I got a bag of mulch on sale over Memorial Day weekend and will put it around some of our plants to help keep water from evaporating out of their soil. I’m also concerned about the quality of the new soil we got this year. It was labeled potting soil, but it has so many rocks and chunks of clay in it and dries out so quickly that I feel they used the term “potting soil” very loosely. I knew it was cheap, but it doesn’t look anything like other potting soils we’ve bought before. So I stocked up on plant food over the holiday weekend too because I don’t think our plants are getting much out of their dirt other than a place to anchor themselves.

So there’s our garden this week. Everything is coming along and I expect we’ll start harvesting quite a few veggies this month!

Container Garden 2016: Week 11

HAVE I EVER MENTIONED I KEEP A GARDEN JOURNAL? I started it last year as a way to keep track of the lengths of time between planting things and our first harvests, but I also noted when we had problems and of course kept track of exact dates. I’m so glad I did because I’ve been feeling really impatient to see our plants this year grow, but it helps to look back at last year’s dates and see that everything is pretty much on track.

Our beefsteak and mini pepper plants that I started indoors are less mature than the plants I bought at the store, so they seem behind schedule. Luckily we’re getting regular hot and sunny weather starting this week, so that should help I think.

My husband’s jalapeno plant is doing well. It developed the beginnings of little buds this week, and buds mean peppers! Sorry the photo is so blurry. I swear there’s some green buds in there.

Now I’m kind of perplexed by this cherry tomato plant. It’s the one I planted upside down in a hanging basket. EVERY upside-down tomato plant I’ve ever seen grows straight down. Not this one. It’s curved itself up as if trying to grow the way it’s meant to. I’m worried the curvature of its stem will weaken it when it begins to bear tomatoes, but then again maybe it will decide to straighten itself out? Anyone know something about this?

I’m a little concerned with our green bean plants. They’ve been growing pretty well, but we had two days of frost last week and I think that hurt some of the plants’ big leaves. A lot of them shriveled up and turned dry and brown. But the stems seem healthy and they’re developing new leaves, so maybe they’ll be okay. I sowed more bean seeds today, so if the current ones don’t work maybe those will.

One of our zucchini plants wilted and died within days of being transplanted outdoors. Not sure why, but I had an extra zuke plant so I replaced the dead one and now both plants are thriving, with lots of new leaves.

Meanwhile our peas and carrots are getting huge! Look at all that green!

Our lettuce is doing great too. I didn’t plant as much this year as I did last year, but what I have has grown well and we even harvested some last week!

Finally, it’s been fun watching our flowers grow.They don’t look like flowers yet because there’s no buds, but there’s a fun variety of leaves and stems so I can only imagine how pretty these pots will be when they finally bloom!

So there’s my garden update for now! We’re pretty happy with our progress thus far and look forward to seeing everything get bigger and leafier and finally make food!

Container Garden 2016: Week 9

BIG GARDENING THIS WEEKEND! We’re taking a chance with the weather and counting on it to get warm enough in the next few days for our hot weather plants. That means putting out the tomatoes, peppers, and zucchinis.

So here they are!

We have 2 each of the beefsteak tomatoes, peppers, and zucchinis that I started from seed indoors. I also bought 2 cherry tomato plants, and a jalapeno pepper plant at the request of my husband. So now these are all out and planted in their designated containers. We have a complete garden!

If you noticed the tops of plastic bottles in our containers, those are a watering experiment. The bottles have holes drilled in them so when we fill them with water it can get down deep to the plant roots. It’s supposed to help get water where it’s needed and conserve water. Hope it works!

Meanwhile our early veggies are growing well. The lettuce and flowers are getting bigger.

The peas sure are climbing! This is bigger than they got last year before the fungus got them.

And the carrots have their feathery leaves and are growing taller too.

Finally, our green beans sprouted this week and they’re growing fast!

I love having all these growing things around me. So much green freshness and potential! Crossed fingers it all grows healthy with few hang-ups!

Container Garden 2016: Week 8

Our seeds continue to sprout and our seedlings continue to grow and develop. My newest pea seeds and some of the flowers have sprouted and are gaining leaves. The lettuces continue to grow.

I got the biggest surprise this morning when I found fat, waxy leaves had suddenly sprouted in my zucchini pots overnight, after previously showing no sign of life. I’ve been putting them out in the sun every day, so naturally they popped up indoors on our stormiest night yet!

If you followed along with our garden last year, there’s some new things we’re trying this year. We’re branching out with our variety and number of veggies. New this year are green beans, which I planted seeds for this past week, and beefsteak tomatoes. We’re also trying different varieties than before. Last year’s gypsy peppers were great, but this year we have mini orange peppers and my husband has requested a jalapeno pepper plant. I also have mini ball zucchinis this year, versus the full-sized heirloom variety we grew last year. With the exception of the beefsteak tomatoes (which I got free), I’ve tried to be more conscious of using container-friendly plants this year. The pepper and zucchini seeds I bought both describe the plants as short and “bushy,” rather than tall and sprawling.

We’re trying some different techniques this year also. I’ve been collecting plastic drink bottles to make watering reservoirs with. We’re going to cut the bottoms off the bottles and drill holes into their sides. When inserted upside down into the dirt next to plants, these bottles can be filled with water that will slowly seep into the dirt and get directly to the roots. It’s supposed to help provide deeper and more targeted watering, with less water wasted. We’ll see how well it works!

We’re also using more seeds this year. We direct-sowed seeds for some plants last year, but for the bigger plants we relied on seedlings from the store. This year I started tomato, pepper, and zucchini seeds indoors and will be transplanting those in the coming weeks.

This year we also have some bigger containers, which I had gotten cheap at garage sales last summer after our planting was done for that season. I planted green bean seeds in one half of a huge water barrel I got and we had cut in two.

So everything is coming along nicely so far. I’m watching the weather and temperatures to gauge when we can put out the hot weather plants. Also trying to balance watering what we already have growing and figuring out where to put everything. But 8 weeks in and the garden is looking good as April ends and we look forward to May!

Container Garden 2016: Week 7

SORRY I NEVER POSTED AFTER PLANTING OUR GARDEN!

Things have been really busy, and honestly the garden isn’t very exciting yet. As soon as it got warm out I planted our lettuce, carrot, and pea seeds, but then it got cold again and slowed down the growing process. Those forecasted above average spring temperatures took their time getting here, and instead we got snow and freeze warnings. However, our seeds did sprout, for the most part. And nothing seems to have been damaged by the freezing temperatures.Here’s our lettuce and carrot sprouts. The other pots have flower seeds in them that I just planted this week, so no sign of life from them yet. But the lettuce and carrots are growing well.

Not many of our pea seeds sprouted, but I think that’s because the chipmunks were digging in our containers and disturbed them. My husband put out traps to keep the critters at bay (sorry little guys), and I planted more peas this week, now that truly warm temperatures have arrived. I really hope the peas do well this year, after the work I’ve put into them and the failure we had last year.

Like my pea trellises? I nailed poultry wire to the rafters above our patio and anchored the ends into the container dirt so the peas have something to climb. I’m still trying to decide what to plant down the middle of that container.

Meanwhile indoors, our tomato and pepper plants sprouted and are growing! They’ve been doing really well just sitting on our dining room table in the window. I intended to grow just 4 plants of each, but the tomatoes were growing so well I managed to transplant some into separate containers instead of thinning them all. The tomatoes are a beefsteak variety so we probably won’t keep more than one or two in our small space, but I’d hate for food-producing plants to go to waste so I’m planning on sharing some with friends and family. The empty-looking pots have zucchini seeds in them. I planted those just a few days ago so they haven’t sprouted yet.

Starting this week we’ve had temperature highs in the 70s and 80s every day- unseasonably warm for central Indiana in April. But with this summer-like weather I think it will be safe to put out more summery vegetables this early. So I’m planning on planting green bean seeds this weekend and getting a cherry tomato plant to start outside. Once my sprouted tomatoes, peppers, and zukes are a little bigger and stronger I’ll put them out too.

So excited to have my garden up and going!

Container Garden 2016: Week 1

The gardening season has begun!

Saturday I officially began our 2016 garden by planting tomato seeds in peat pots on our dining room table. The first week of March feels so early to start, but after consulting a lot of websites and books and checking the weather forecast, I determined that those seeds would have to be started sooner than later in order to have plants to put out when the weather gets hot.

So those were planted Saturday, and by yesterday (Thursday) four seeds had already sprouted and poked through the dirt! I’ve never started seeds indoors before, but I must be doing it right so far!

I also started mini sweet pepper seeds two nights ago, because the seeds just came in the mail on Tuesday. I’m really excited for these peppers. I got a variety that grows on small bushy plants, perfect for containers, and produces 3” orange-red sweet peppers. They were so pretty in the picture! And I think they’ll look great in our hanging basket pots.

Also this week my husband finally drilled some holes into the big half-barrels we were composting in over the winter. They had filled up with water and needed to be drained. Later this week I’ll be mixing perlite into the dirt to help lighten it up for planting, as well as picking out the big chunks of food scraps that haven’t broken down completely. Finally, tomorrow I have a friend coming over to help plant our pea, carrot, and lettuce seeds outside and really get things going (or growing). Hooray!

The weather forecast is calling for above average temperatures this spring, and this week we’ve already had 60 and 70 degree temperatures, instead of the usual 40s and 50s. Perfect for starting a garden! It’s been really rainy though, so I probably won’t have to do much watering for our newly sown seeds.

I’ll post pictures after our planting tomorrow. Gotta post the “before” photos to make the “after” photos even more amazing!

Container Garden 2016

IS IT TOO SOON TO START TALKING ABOUT THIS YEAR’S GARDEN? I hope not because I’ve already started work on it.

I started thinking about it a month ago in the middle of January’s cold and snow. Honestly, we’ve had a pretty mild winter for central Indiana, but any winter is too much for me. I just never come to terms with it being cold and icy. So a few weeks ago I started picking up gardening books from the library and making notes on a Google doc about how I want to do our garden this year. I even started reposting photos of last year’s garden on Facebook because I needed to see some green life when everything is dead and wet outside.

But thoughts eventually turned into actions. I couldn’t help it.

I was thinking about what we could do better or try new this year and one of my goals is to get more zucchini this time around. Last year’s single plant produced 4 zucchini before it stopped producing, despite our diligent hand-pollination, and then it dried up and died off.

 

I was looking at burpee.com (I loved the Burpee catalogs when I was little. So many pretty flowers and produce!) and saw they had a variety of zucchini plant seeds. Last year our plant was an heirloom variety that my husband bought without knowing what heirloom meant. According to my research, heirloom plants are great if you get a variety that’s proven to do well in your area and your seeds come from an already established plant. But if your new heirloom plant doesn’t meet those standards, production can be iffy, though probably not a complete failure. Our plant came from a big chain store, so I’d be surprised if it was a variety bred specifically for our area.

This  year I decided to look for hybrid zucchinis, to see if we’d get a better yield. I also wondered if there was a variety proven to do well in pots, since that’s where ours will be planted. Burpee’s hybrid ball zucchini and squash mix seeds caught my eye. The package includes 4 varieties of ball zucchini and summer squash. They look like cute, little colorful balls, instead of the typical long and slender zukes. On top of that, one of the online reviews said these plants did great in a container on their porch. Perfect! I ordered a pack. And nice old Burpee included a free package of their “bird and butterfly” flower seed mix too. So now I can plant some pots of pretty flowers to add to our garden and maybe attract bees to help pollinate our plants! I’m really excited for that.

Something else I did was just last weekend. I read somewhere that you need to test old seeds before planting. It would suck pretty bad to go to all that work to plant seeds and then nothing grows because they’re too old! And I’ll admit I didn’t do anything special to store our leftover seeds from last year… Thankfully humans have been cultivating edible plants for thousands of years and then started writing books and websites on the subject for clueless novices like me. 🙂 So Sunday I hunted down our seeds and followed the directions I found in one of my library books. I put about 10 seeds of each variety between pieces of damp paper towel and put them into labeled plastic snack bags. Then I put them on top of our entertainment center because I didn’t know where else to put them. LoL. In the dampness, good seeds will germinate, and my book said if at least half the seeds germinate this way within 2 weeks they are good enough to plant in your garden. Well having seen how fast lettuce can sprout, I knew if those seeds were still good they would germinate a lot sooner than 2 weeks. Sure enough, when I peeked at them tonight (Thursday) they had sprouted! And it looked like all of them had sprouted. Yep, they’re good! I was surprised to find that the pea seeds were also starting to sprout already, although just barely. So far nothing from the carrot seeds, but I’m not worried about them yet.

One more thing I’ve done is plan out when to start planting. That’s probably the most important step because you can’t do much else successfully if you don’t know when to plant things! This year we will try starting tomato and the zucchini seeds indoors, so I had to calculate how soon to start those. I also needed to figure out when it would be safe to plant our cool weather veggies– the lettuce, peas, and carrots. Last year we started our garden on a whim and I discovered we probably could have started a few weeks earlier, so this year we will start as soon as possible. With our mild-ish winter and the groundhog predicting an early spring, I hope that planting in mid-March instead of early April will be safe for our plants and give us a longer growing season.

A final thing we’ve done to prepare for this year’s garden is compost our soil from last year. I put all our old potting mix into three of our biggest containers in October and have been putting kitchen scraps in to decompose and add nutrients back to the dirt. The compost has been pretty frozen for most of this time, but we’re getting a preview of spring weather this weekend, followed by warmer than freezing temperatures for the following week, so hopefully that will help break down the food scraps. I’ll pick out anything that’s still too big before we plant our delicate sprouts and seeds next month.

So excited to be taking the first steps in getting our 2016 garden started! Last year’s garden was such a great success for being our first attempt, and I’m really looking forward to trying some new things and improving others this year. And like last year I invite you to join in nature’s bounty with us by reading my blog posts about our progress.

Happy planting (next month)!