Life’s A Garden: Dig It! {Part 3}

Harvest time!!! At least for some things. I’d say overall success for our container garden this year was about 70%. Granted, full harvest time isn’t over yet, but I think we’ve gotten the majority of the crop that we’re going to get. Sooooooo, let’s get to it!

First up, the broccoli. While the plants themselves got HUGE, the florets were only so-so. We got three different bunches, this being the biggest. However, it was delicious!

While it was still growing. . .

The final head of florets, yum!

Next up is peas. The peas got very tall, way taller than I was expecting. I had to MacGyver a second tier of cages on with duct tape (super fancy, let me tell ya) but it worked beautifully! They wrapped on to the newly added cage height and gave us lots of fresh snap peas. We don’t shell our peas – we just eat them raw. Yum yum yum! I don’t think any of the handfuls made it more than five minutes in the house. We still have a few stragglers every couple days which we pluck off and munch, but I think our big harvest bunches are all done.

Happy peas ready for picking!

A little bunch – so delicious to chomp down!

Carrot time! Of our original eight plots of carrots, only four actually made it, and I think only one is going to be a big success (see below photo). The others all seem very small. We’re leaving them in the ground for another couple weeks, but I’m not counting on much.

The biggest of them so far!

My miss was so excited to pull them. I didn’t tell her what was coming up, I just said ‘Pull the stems up!’. She yanks on them, and out it pops. Her eyes got HUGE and she yelled, “CARROTS!!!” with extreme excitement. It was wonderful.

And now *insert big sad sigh*. . .my tomatoes. I had such high hopes. The plants themselves are about six feet tall. They are taller than I am!! By about six inches!! And they have about 17 – 20 tomatoes total between the two plants. But they seem to have become stunted. I haven’t seen a change or growth in them in two weeks. . .the tomatoes aren’t ripening; they are just stuck in the green bulbish stage. I think the biggest problem is the size of their containers. Everything I had read said one tomato plant per 5 gallon bucket was a good ratio, but I was not counting on have mutant size plants! There is basically no soil left in the buckets – they have become buckets of pot bound roots. And these weren’t even given a fertilizer or anything! Do they make the opposite of Miracle Gro? ‘Cause I need it. So for next year, I need to find a way to have smaller tomato plants or invest in larger, taller buckets. The plants this year are so heavy they keep tipping over – crashing right through the cages and taking the bucket down with them. So I’ll give the actual tomato fruits another week, and if I still see no change hopefully I can pluck them and they can window ripen in the sun? Definitely not getting my hopes up; I really think they are way too tiny to ripen and be delicious. But this was my experiment year so no big deal! Ok, end of tomato rant.

They are slightly larger than this, but not by much. Bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball. Maybe racquetball sized??? Anyway, I don’t think they’ll ripen. Booooo……

My onions are still growing. The stems seem healthy but I have no clue if anything is actually happening under the soil or if I’m just growing really nice looking stems. . .only time will tell I suppose. I’ll give them to the end of August and see what I’ve got! Oh and as for spinach – I got about three salads worth before it ran out. . .which was sometime mid-July. The leaves were a bit thin for my taste – I prefer a crisper leaf. I think I’ll try some leafy lettuce next year, especially since my daughter likes that better!

I’ll do one more post at the end of the summer season to wrap up my thoughts on container gardening. I hope you’ve enjoyed them so far! Until next time,