This Years Garden

With the official end of winter approaching, my thoughts lately have been frequently wandering to one of my favorite subjects.  Organic gardening.




Since we live in an apartment, our space for gardening is extremely limited.  But my nagging desire to grow our own food has only grown stronger, so as a compromise we've started doing some limited gardening in pots.

There is a community garden down the street, but there is waiting list to get in, and for $40 a month, I just don't see the sense in gardening over there.  We don't spend much more than twice that on produce every month, and I think in a year or two I can be growing just as much in containers as I can in that community garden, so I just don't see the benefit of spending that money every month.

Ultimately, my goal is to grow most of the produce we consume in buckets, but until then, we're doing some limited gardening in pots.

We purchased our "red flame" grape fruit tree in the fall of 2009 from Home Depot.  It had one fruit hanging and two that had fallen into the pot.  We took it home and repotted it.  We didn't get any more fruit that year presumably because we repotted it.  We didn't get any fruit in 2010, either because it was still recovering from being repotted, or because we moved to a new city.  But this year we've already grown our first fruit and there are lots of flower buds. We're expecting a good size harvest this year.

We purchased our Kumquat tree in the spring of 2010 from a nursery.  When we bought it, it was just loaded with fruit.  We ate most of it in Salad.  Kumquat is a delicious little citrus that has edible skin.  It's kind of sour to me, but not too sour.  We moved about 4 months after purchasing the tree, and the move caused it to stop producing fruit.  Shortly after the move it was attacked by rats and most of it was eaten.  It spent last summer injured, seemed to spend the winter mostly dormant, and this spring it has started growing alot of new green leaves and new limbs.  No fruit or flowers yet, but I'm confident we'll have fruit by late summer.

In the spring of 2010, we purchased this "Thompson Seedless" grape.  It produced alot of green leaves and woody stems last year but no fruit.  In Jan 2011 I cut it back to encourage new growth.  About a week ago it started growing green leaves again.  I think it's going to come back much fuller this year, but I'm still not expecting any fruit until next year or maybe the year after.  I'm really looking forward to eating grapes!

We grew these three tomato plants from seed last year.  The two on the left are grape tomatos (for salad), and the one on the right is a larger variety for slicing and eating on sandwiches.  We had them in a Topsy Turvy, but they weren't doing very well, so we moved them into these three pots hoping to save some of the season.  We didn't end up getting any decent tomatos from them, but I was really surprised they survived the winter, so as an experiment I decided to try to see how much fruit we'd get off them this year.   We already have one little green tomato growing on the far left plant, and several blooms.  I think they all will do really well this year.

This is a Zucchini squash we grew from a seed started in February 2011,  It's planted in a really beautiful pot that my wife made in a pottery class we took during the winter of 2009.  It's just in that pot so it can come in at night.  We're either going to move it to a bigger pot or into the ground once the weather warms a little.

I can't figure out what I like more...  The plant or the pot.  I think it's the pot ;)

Knowing nothing about Strawberries except I love to eat them and my wife makes an amazing Strawberry cake using fresh Strawberries, I purchased this "Sequoia Strawberry" from Home Depot in February for $3.50.  I brought it home and started reading about Strawberries online, I have discovered they are very easy to grow and propagate.  We've already eaten 4 really tiny, but delicious berries from this plant, and I think we'll end up with alot more fruit before the season is over, and I'm really excited about making a bunch more plants from this first plant.

My wife grew some herbs and some chives from seeds we started in Feb 2011, and planted some of them in this strawberry pot (we don't have strawberry plants to put in it yet).  She's hoping they do well so she can use them in the kitchen, but we've had terrible luck with herbs so far.

Pictured are my two worm composting systems.  On the right is my stacking bin system that I started on Dec 9, 2009.  The one on the left is the flow through system I purchased on Jan 22, 2011.  The flow through system, or Worm Inn, is a much better system that I upgraded to after not being satisfied with the stacking bin system.  I still have the bins because they do work, and I generate more waste than my Worm Inn will accommodate.  Not wanting to spend another $80 for a second Worm Inn, I now use both systems.  The worm composting systems convert our organic waste into clean, fertile soil to grow more food with, while diverting waste from our local landfills.

A pair of doves have started nesting on our patio.  We think she laid her eggs 2 nights ago, so we've limited our activity on the patio to allow them the privacy they need to raise their family.  I like having the Doves around, as I love birds and I really hope to be able to keep racing pigeons someday.  The Doves hanging around create a great opportunity to show my wife how awesome these birds are and how great it would be to keep pigeons.  I'm hoping she begins to enjoy the birds as much as I do.

That's what we're working on this year.  Next year I'm hoping to start gardening in buckets, and we're hoping to grow more produce each year until we're growing almost all of the produce we consume.  I'll keep you updated on our container garden as the season progresses.

Good luck with your gardening!