Gardening Update - Not Quite an Epic Fail

Gardening gloves. Image: Sandid/Pixabay.

I promised that I would share my successes and failures with you, so here goes.

Tomatoes

These didn't bomb completely.  In fact, they started to grow quite well indoors.  But I think I did two things wrong.  I didn't start them sooner and I don't have a good enough indoor set-up with good lighting.  They also got a bit spindly.  I found an interesting post on a blog called Organic Growing Pains about this problem.  The author suggests replanting spindly plants with dirt up half of the stem and they bounced right back.

I will keep a better eye on this next year and make the lighting and timing changes and try this if they get spindly.  I did end up getting a couple of tomato plants from the nursery just so I could have some salad tomatoes.  It was too late for a great harvest but I did get some good slicing tomatoes as well as enough green tomatoes to make some delicious green tomato relish.

Potatoes in Containers

This was the first year I tried this experiment with growing potatoes.  I planted seed potatoes in two trash cans (covered in this post).  We didn't have a great harvest, just enough for about three meals and 20 good seed potatoes for next year's planting.  They were all healthy though.  Again, I think I started too late and possibly harvested too early.

Herbs

I did mostly container herb gardening on the deck.  Most of these did okay.  Again, I think I didn't start the seeds indoors early enough and need a better lighting setup.  I'd like to plant some directly in the ground next year as well as see what happens.  My lavender turned out spindly so I may try the tomato trick.  But to my delight, I discovered some growing as pretty as you please in my front yard.  I think the former owners planted it not long before they moved and it's just starting to really fill in.

So, I'll be studying the best soil and rotation techniques.  We tried to grow some collards in the greenhouse because last year we had a problem with cabbage worms.  They took off but I think they really wanted to be out in the open.  I may rotate the tomatoes into the containers on the deck where I had the collards (sans greenhouse) and put the collards in the boxes where the tomatoes were and possibly put some netting over them in hopes of keeping the cabbage worms.  I may try spray but I am trying to be organic about things.  I've read about some home remedies for the worms I may try first.

I don't consider this a complete failure.  I did learn some really good lessons about what I need to do in my area in regard to gardening.

© P.J. Deneen