Update - 8/2/21

I know I haven't been around in a while, but that's because not much is going on in the garden.

Except today, I found a new flower on one of my tomato plants.  It's one of the ones I grew from seeds!  I'm inordinately excited about this.  Now my one baby tiny tomato might soon have a friend.  And my one tiny tomato is just shy of ping-pong ball size.  Yay.  

In zucchini news, none of them are blooming anymore.  But I have the beginnings of new flowers coming out.  Fingers crossed they're female.  AND male.  Because even though I saved some male flowers, I'm iffy about the viability of the pollen.  No word yet on whether the plants I gave a neighbor are doing any better than my pathetic crew.

Also, several of the zucchini have larger and darker leaves.  So I got that going for me.  

Trying to stay positive is hard sometimes.  Some days, I get discouraged enough that I want to rip all the plants out and feed them to the deer.  Then at least somebody would get some nourishment out of this experiment.  I'm already looking to next year and what I can do differently to achieve a better harvest.  (Or a real harvest.)

By the way, once growing season is over for these plants, they will become deer food.  Unless there's some way to over winter them so they can try again next year.  I'll have to look into that.

Updates 5/27/21 and a Note

Note:  When you pick lettuce, you damn well better eat it right away or it gets wilty.  At least this kind of loose leaf butter lettuce goes wilty.  I had to throw out what I picked a couple days ago.  Bummer.

Updates:  I have buds on several of my zucchini plants now.  The two tomato plants I bought are getting tall and the shorter one has flowers.  The tomatoes I did from seeds are starting to get bigger.  The carrots are growing right along.  

I should probably thin the tomatoes I planted from seed, but I don't have the heart to kill those extra plants.  Silly, I know.  They need thinning to grow big and strong.  Well, for one of them to grow big.  The others would be dead.  See why I don't have the heart to do it?  I'd suck as a farmer.  And this is why we chose not to go into animal husbandry.  I'm pretty sure I could kill a rabbit if I had no other meat to eat, but since I can still get food from the store, I'm not in a position where I need alternative meat sources.  

The other day, I got a wild hair and bought an onion set.  A set is a bunch of baby onion plants.  You plug them into the ground and they grow into big plants with full-sized onions.  I'm planning on putting them in my flower gardens, here and there, to see where they'll grow best.  We'll see how that goes.  If it fails, I'll only have wasted $1.30.  

Speaking of money, I sat down and made a list of everything I've bought strictly for this garden thing.  I'm at about $55.  Not sure if the food I'll grow would've cost that much.  We'll see how this goes, too.  

It's all a learning curve this year.  

Today, we're supposed to get some particularly bad weather.  The plan is to bring everything inside - either in the sun room or in the garage.  Keep your fingers crossed it all goes well.

Updates 05/22/21

Here are the plants today... all in a row.  

Except for the lettuces which are over here:

I've rearranged the deck for optimum growage.  The zucchinis are in the front, because they need horizontal room to spread and the tomatoes and the carrots are in the back because they grow vertically.  The lettuces are in a spot where they get gentle morning sun and by early afternoon, they're in the shade.  Yay.

I also moved out outdoor seating to the east side of the deck, to give more of the sunny spots to the plants.  So we'll be sitting in the shade.  Here's the view from the seating area:

Eventually, the zukes will take over, but I'm okay with that.  There are two doors, so even if the zukes take up all the middle space, we can still get around.  

As the sun dips to the north over the next month or so, I'll have to pull some things more toward the middle of the deck, so they get more sun, but I'm okay with that.  

Shuttling Plants Around

 Yesterday, I thought I'd read that we were supposed to get splooshed upon, so I brought all the plants inside.  (Because they're too tiny to take a big splooshing yet.)

Then I realized I'd jumped the gun and the plants were going to need to be watered again before the big rain, so I moved them all back outside for watering (because I don't want a big drippy mess in my sunroom.)

16 zucchinis, twelve tomatoes, 5 lettuces, 8 carrots, and one pot with the two baby cedar trees.  42 pots.  And I still have an egg carton with lettuce seedlings in the garage.  Umm...  Yah.

Anyway, I got them all out and I watered them all.  Later, once they've had a chance to drip any excess water, I'll bring them back inside until Tuesday when the weather is supposed to be better.

At some point, these babies will be big enough to handle a splooshing on their own and they'll stay outside, but for now, I'm okay with toting them around.  Huge thanks to Hubs for toting them with me.

Oh, and here's a closeup of some of the baby zukes and lettuces.  Aren't they cute?  I can't wait to eat them up.  

Update 5/1/21 - MAY DAY!

Heh, there's no problem.  It's just May Day.  The first day of my favorite month of the year.  =o)

All of the tomatoes are transplanted into bigger pots - one egg carton space worth per pot.  So, I have 12 pots of tomato seedlings - some with only one but most have three to five in there.  I'll probably thin them after they get some more height.  

I've also done away with the carrot transplants that didn't take well and reseeded those containers with the new carrot seeds (they're pink!) and done two more Tampico Punch jugs with seeds.  Five seeds per container at the corners and in the middle.

The zucchinis seem to be thriving in their new pots.  The lettuces are also doing well in their containers.  I started new lettuce seeds last week and those are coming up gangbusters.

I never mention it, but I took one small onion out of the last batch I bought for eating and shoved it into the rosebed.  So far, so good.  Not sure what'll happen, but it was already going in the fridge, so I wasn't planning on eating it anyway.

Yeah, I'm kinda nuts.  This is all sort of a test to see what works and what doesn't.  If the tomatoes don't work well from seed, I'll buy plants next month.  Fingers crossed, though.  I really want my babies to grow and give me fruits.

Updates

Yesterday, I transplanted all the zucchini sprouts into their own, individual pots.  I ended up with 14 potted zucchini plants.  One of them had gotten large enough that I probably should've done the transplant sooner, as I ended up breaking some of its roots.  We'll see if it survives.  

And last night, I left all the zukes and the carrots out.  I think we're past all chances of freezing now.  They're sheltered under the eaves on the deck because I knew it was going to rain all night and all day today.  I don't think they're old enough to handle that much extra water.  Anyway, I went out and checked on them this morning and they all seem to be doing fine.

I had a dream last night wherein my mother was asking me if I was ever going to transplant the tomatoes.  Umm, yah.  I do plan to do that soon.  But I need more dirt.

The lettuce seeds I planted on the 22nd starting showing sprouts yesterday.  5 days from planting to sprouting.  Yay.  The new carrot seeds haven't made an appearance yet.  But they're outside now, too, so maybe that will encourage them to poke their heads up.

Part of me wants to plant some other stuff.  Spinach maybe.  I do love me some fresh spinach.  Potatoes?  Strawberries?  We'll see.  This is already a lot of work, so I may not get too far afield of what I've already done.

If you could plant anything you wanted, what would you plant?  What are some of your favorite fresh produces?  

The Containers

If you looked at my pics, you'll notice a variety of containers in my garden.  Right now, there are ice cream containers, and chip containers, and egg crates, and coffee cans and... well, of course, there are actual plant pots.  

Any container will do as long as it's mostly watertight.  You don't want to use anything cardboard, because the water will ruin them lickety-split.  (When means no oatmeal containers.  Bummer.)  The reason I say mostly watertight, is because you still need them all to be able to drain or your poor plants will drown and rot.  

Thus, at the bottom of each of the MacGyver'd containers, I've cut holes to let the water out.  Basically, I used a box cutter to make Xs.  I was going to use the drill with an auger bit, but the damn drill needed charging and I was irritated, so I took the containers into the garage and stabbed them to death.  The extra liquid drains out fine, but I don't lose any of the dirt like I sometimes do with the actual plant pots.

The actual plant pots, by the way, were acquired from every plant I've ever bought for the yard.  And I've planted a lot of stuff in my outside gardens, so I have loads of those things.  (Good thing I'm such a pack rat.)  If you're not a pack rat like me, you really are going to need to either buy containers or use household things to make your garden.  I'm cheap, so buying containers was not happening for me.  

The ice cream buckets... Yeah, I eat a LOT of ice cream, so I already had tons of those.  (Pack rat, remember.)  I still have several I haven't used yet.  Those will all be lettuces.  The chip containers are carrots.  The egg cartons are for starter seedlings - lettuce and tomatoes.  The coffee can has carrots in it, too.  Anything tall will have carrots in it.  Oh, and I totally forgot about the juice cartons.  Those are Tampico Punch - where I cut the tops off.  They're tall, so they work.  And yes, they have holes in the bottoms, too.

Like I said, anything will work.  You do have to consider what kind of vegetable you're planting in each, though.  The zucchinis are in actual pots - low to the ground with plenty of stability so when they go to vine, they won't tip themselves over.  The tomatoes will also be in similar pots - low and stable - so when they get tall, they won't tip over.  Lettuce needs to be in a big enough container to accommodate the size of the adult plant.  And like I said, carrots have to be in a tall enough pot to fit the length of a full grown carrots.  The carrots seeds I bought are supposed to produce 7-8" carrots, so the containers have to be at least that tall.  Don't want mutant carrots.

Sure, I couldn't spent a ton on real pots.  :shrug:  It's just not my style.  The only thing in a store bought pot - one not purchased with a plant already inside - are the baby cedars.  And I had the pot in the garage for years.  I think it used to have a Christmas cactus in it that I transplanted after I bought it.  It died.  Long live the cedars.

What about you?  What kinds of pot ideas would you have if you were going to create a container garden the MacGyver way?  

Container Update - All Pics

Here's the container garden today, taking in the lovely sun.  They'll go back into the garage this evening and stay there through the next few rainy days.  

It doesn't look like much now, but it's going along.