Garden Experiments

So far, my garden experiments for the year are doing pretty well.

We have the tomato-on-a-stick, which has held up perfectly well so far against torrential wind, rain, and hail:

The rather sad-looking bougainvillea against the fence in the background is another story. Maybe the recent hot, dry weather will perk it up a bit.

Then we have corn-in-a-box, which is also doing well so far:

A more recently-started experiment is growing lettuce in the summer. I’ve got tiny lettuce sprouts popping up in these containers, which will be kept in the shade (or possibly even indoors), to see if I can extend the harvest. I also re-seeded in the garden, and I’ll probably put up a shade structure over those.

Next year, the 3-tiered pot will be used for strawberries (and may become a 4-tiered pot, if it isn’t too unstable) in yet another experiment. This is sort of a test-run. I don’t have space in the garden for strawberries any more, but when I dug up the garden patch when we put in the garage, I threw some of the plants in containers. They’ve been doing okay, but the harvest is small since there aren’t many plants. Also, in a reasonably large pot, the berries in the center of the pot tend to sit in the soil. I was going to ask DH to build a strawberry pyramid for me, but it would be a bit expensive for the cedar, would take an enormous amount of soil to fill, and it may be difficult to keep the top tiers from drying out too quickly without the bottom getting soggy.

Instead, I figured I’d try just stacking pots. I bought matching 4 pots in graduating sizes (they were even on sale, quite cheap!). These are the three smallest. Since strawberry (and lettuce) roots are fairly shallow, you don’t need to totally fill the larger pots with soil. Instead, you can put some sort of filler in them to take up some of the space. For example, you could put a small pot upside down inside the larger pot, which would form the support base for the next pot. You could also use bricks or pretty much anything that will be unaffected by the soil and water in the pot. The advantage to this system is that it’s cheap, and if it’s a total failure, I still have the pots that can be used for something else.

As for the garden harvest, I’m still getting some lettuce and spinach, but the spinach is starting to bolt. The greens were pretty much a disappointment in the garden this year. The beets got a really slow start, so there’s only one or two that might currently be of harvest-able size; the rest need a bit more time. But in another day or two, I’ll be harvesting peas – they’re doing really well this year: