Container Garden, Week 4 Update

The day after the Week 3 Update was posted, it rained. And rained. And rained.  Long, slow and soaking rain. The perfect rain! Almost two inches of rain! Low grumbling thunder for special effects. Perfect! There’s just something about a slow rain that makes plants grow better, in my humble opinion.

Unlike two days later with torrential downpours and 50 mph winds. We got almost 1″ of rain with that round, but luckily the plants survived the beating.

Seed Starting

 

The trays above have mostly herbs, tomatoes, a few peppers and a couple of zucchini. 

No, I didn’t start my seeds indoors in a timely manner. And yes, I did expect some to not germinate due to being old seed. I even covered the trays with netting to bird-proof the trays. However, when I see new seedling in one pot and the exact same batch of seeds not germinating in the next pot, I knew I needed to do some investigating.

Turns out, I must have had a little mouse digging up and munching on the seeds, particularly the squash seeds, and maybe the mini-watermelon seeds. The outer shell of the squash seeds had obvious little bite marks. I could find no trace of the watermelon seeds. So those seeds have been replanted and that tray is now as mouse-proof as I could make it.

Beans & Peas Melons & Squash

It’s always good to start with a plan, but you also have to be prepared to make changes.

My regular green bush beans are doing great! They are in the second and fourth containers.

The peas that had been planted in the other three containers didn’t germinate and it’s now too late for them. I did buy several packs of fresh seed for a fall planting.

I planted the cantaloupe seedlings in two of the previously designated pea containers. They are an Heirloom variety called Minnesota Midget (developed in the 1940s) and are softball-size melons that grow on three to four-foot vines. These small melons are the perfect size for one person. Especially for me, because Hubby can’t even stand the smell, let alone the taste.

If the mini-watermelons germinate, I’ll plant them in the last container above.

The Flat green beans in the middle container above are doing good!

The Gold Rush yellow bush beans and French Filet green bush beans planted together in the last container were a bust.

I decided to put some of the zucchini and yellow neck squash plants in the ground. But since this is a Container Garden series, I figured I ought to plant at least a couple in containers. I planted two yellow squash in the short container at the bottom of the picture above, and two zucchini in the last container.

Hot Peppers

The Jalpeno peppers are looking great and growing well.

The Pablanos (in the second and third containers from the left) have baby peppers! We love Chiles Rellenos, so hope these do well!

The day lilies in the first container on the left did not get moved as planned. Now they have buds, so I’ll wait till fall to move them. Since they are only planted in the front of the container, I may add some flowers behind them.

Tomatoes

The tomato plants are still standing upright in spite of the high heat and gloomy days with way more than enough rain.

The large red cherry tomato seedlings are doing pretty good in the seed tray and should be ready to plant in their new container next week. It’s on the left of the front container above, which is right of the cucumbers below.

Cucumbers

Cucumbers have started to take off and almost ready to cling to the cage!

Bell Peppers

The bell peppers are doing great. I noticed the regular bell pepper transplants have grown quite a bit and are starting to bud. I had to do a double-take when I saw they were already half as tall as the larger orange bell pepper that I had planted at the same time. The orange bell pepper plant has baby bells!

Melons

I made a happy discovery in one of the containers previously designated for the melons. While I was weeding and prepping it, there were a bunch of volunteer seedlings for large yellow cherry tomatoes, from where a few tomatoes dropped last summer. I put them in a pot to await a permanent home.

Now I have the three containers originally designated for melons empty. I have to give some thought as to what to plant there.

I’m moving plastic flower boxes to all of the wire shelves on the right above and will fill them with herbs from the seed trays.

Pepé Le Pew

No sign of Pepé Le Pew the first day after the last update. However, the second day Hubby saw him back in the field and shot at him with bird shot, which sent him scurrying down the bank and back across the road.

I don’t remember if I mentioned in the last post that Pepé Le Pew was recently spotted about 30 feet from the house and really close to our vehicles. Neither one of us are in good enough shape to out run the skunk . . . so he had to go.

If you have not had a close encounter with a skunk, let me tell you . . . it is horrible! Our fur-baby got sprayed several years ago…the morning him and I were leaving on a 9 hour road trip. I got him washed up the best I could with every home remedy I could find on Pinterest at 5 o’clock in the morning. The trip was not unbearable, as long as the window was down a little. But every time he got wet for 6 months, you could still get an awful whiff of it. And that was with him being bathed weekly, in addition to having his own wading pool for multiple daily cooling off dips.

My Container Garden

April and May are my busiest months and as my obligations wind down, I should be able to get most everything planted before the next update. And hopefully, most of my weeding and other stuff done, in order to take some pretty pictures.

I hope you continue to follow along, so that you can see how easy it is to do container gardening. I’ll start showing some of my favorite tips and tricks to make gardening easier for those with limited time or space, or those that have health issues.

 

Happy Gardening!

Robin