What’s Growing In My Garden
In previous summers, I’ve done a pretty good job of keeping up with semi-regular garden journal posts, complete with pictures, updates, and notes for improvement. Mostly these posts have been for myself as a way to sort of track and stay on top of this funny little side hobby of mine.
I’ve been the laziest this year. Lazy about tending the garden and lazier still about recording anything. I barely have any before photos to share at all. As nature would only have it, the thing is going completely bananas. I should admit that for the first time ever, I have not been as lazy about watering, but that means I’m remembering to do it two to three days a week instead of the usual one.
Like everything else in my life, I like the idea of tidiness when it comes to gardening. I always plan for things to go in neat little rows and to grow exactly in the space I’ve planned for them. This, of course, never happens. It is the one and only bit of raw chaos in my life that I somehow tend to embrace and it seems to finally be working for me.
Garden Harvest by the Numbers
As of today, July 7, 2018 (Happy Birthday, Carter!), which is still quite early, I have harvested the following (this is a rough count):
Zucchini: 50+
Grape Tomato: uncountable
Cucumber: 10
Hot Pepper: 2
Planted last Fall Onions: 6
Reg. Tomato: 5
Okra: 20-30
Today was unseasonably shady and cool so I decided to get out there and make a couple videos to show you what is growing, and exactly how big of a mess it all is. I’m still a bit of an amateur at the video thing, so skip this if you aren’t truly interested.
Vertical Gardening
I’ve been interested in vertical gardening from the very beginning because it allows more to grow in a smaller space. This year I did to my cantaloupe what I’ve been doing with my cucumbers every year and it seems to be working.
[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/B2AaSZfUL_Y”%5D
Compost Volunteers and the Overflow Bed
I added a new plot out in the area where I used to free range compost and subsequently grow hundreds of volunteer baby pumpkins every summer far too early for Halloween. I moved my okra to this spot this year and then filled the other half with random leftovers, including green peppers and an extra zucchini plant. The best part of this bed, however, is the amount of volunteers that have sprung up. So far we’ve identified one volunteer tomato and butternut squash. (I have never planted butternut squash so this is something that originally came from a grocery store. Talk about a side-hustle.)
[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/_rKOpbSPOJE”%5D
Growing Tomatoes on Poles (Sort Of)
My current tomato beds were added last year and each of these boxes are SIP systems. As I mention in the video, this area gets the least amount of direct sunshine each day, which is, I assume, why the plants grow so tall. The jimmy-rigged creation to keep them somewhat tame is easily the most ghetto part of my entire garden. I never have a super high tomato yield, which is fine because who can eat that many tomatoes, but I also put very little effort into keeping them going.
Also, I used to kill my tomatoes nearly every summer from under-watering. With my SIP system in place, somewhat heavy mulching, and the lack of direct sunlight for all but three hours a day, and I can go entire weeks of forgetting these babies. They just seem to live and thrive.
[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/pth1I0Ok_tw”%5D
SIP System Gardening
If you are interested in my SIP Systems, which are sub-irrigation planters (some call them self-watering but this is misleading), you can see how we built them here. I could have sworn I did more posts about this but I cannot find anything right now. At any rate, the idea is that they are fully enclosed containers (we use plastic on the bottom) and the dirt sits on the top and sucks the water out of the reservoir at the bottom. I don’t fully understand it but it totally seems to work.
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