Planting the Container Garden - March 7 Planting Day

After the haybales were planted, it’s time to get going on the container garden Charles built for me.  I love it so much.  It’s just high enough for me to work in it comfortably and it was really reasonable to build.  Even so, Charles mutters about our food being the most expensive in the state…. Lol.

I have reworked all the soil and added good container soil as well as compost and 13-13-13 fertilizer, which I also used on the hay bales in the last stage of conditioning.  I try to rotate the plants from year to year, but it’s really hard with this small of a garden space and I also have to consider the plants that need the most sun, because that’s premium real estate here.  The way I handle that is to pretty much take all the soil out, amend it and put it back in.  Cant do that with a ground garden huh?

 

This year, I bought this tub from Arbor Gate specifically for my slicer tomatoes.  I decided to plant Brandywines and I bought those from Arbor Gate as well.  Brandywines are notorious for getting various defugalties so I’ll have to keep an eye on them.  I am going to pay close attention to pruning them as well.  They are an indeterminate tomato so they are really going to grow and get out of hand if I don’t keep at them.  

I started these cherry tomatoes (that’s what I call all small tomatoes) from seed and they are Burpee Red Currants.  These will need watching as well since they are also indeterminate and will definitely crawl all over the place.

This is something new this year because I wanted to do all I can to provide food for pollinators and invite to my garden.  These are African Blue Basil plants and Beverly at Arbor Gate said they are the best way to get bees to visit because they love them.  I’ll show a video of them in another blog post.  I also planted some Ferry Morse Butterfly Flower and some seeds we bought while in the Italian Alps, Gentiana Acaulas, Alpin Enzian.  I started those in the Green house and I'll say more about them later.

This year I decided not to grow bell peppers and grow Poblano peppers instead.  I grew the Ferry Morse Poblanos and Habaneros from seed which was a huge success!  Starting the seeds and using the greenhouse is fun and saving me money.  Maybe now Charles won’t call them the most expensive peppers in the US anymore!

The Oregano over-wintered very well and I took this opportunity to thin them and transplanted a few pots to give to my friends.  Unfortunately, the COVID 19 virus hit and I couldn’t deliver them.  So, I’ve just been watering them because I don’t really have a place for them.  I also added these flowers, Calabrocoa Superbells in a further attempt to bring pollinators.

I planted these Basil plants I bought from Arbor Gate.  I tried unsuccessfully to grow these from seed and it was disappointing.  We eat a LOT of Basil and I am hoping to be able to freeze some in cubes for the upcoming winter so I’ll need to plant more as we go along.

I was a little thrown with what to do with these tubs because I planted them at the end of January on a whim with Kale, spinach and lettuce and they grew like gangbusters.  I know the lettuce isn’t going to last through heat so I’ll just plant this tub a little later.  I found some room at the back of the Kale tub for some Cayenne pepper plants that I bought from Arbor Gate.