Houston Garden Report - #1
The First Day of Spring – March 21, 2013
How-dee from H- Town! Well it's that time again!!
I've been putting in this years attempt at a garden – again... I'm reminded of the classic definition or 'insanity' … repeating the same actions... but expecting different results.. [lol].
I had been planning to give another try at a garden this season – and in recent days, whilst pondering 'n cogitatin' on it as the weather got nice, I got a bit of a shove when I found 44 miniature roses in 4” pots on clearance .. and after a bit o hagglin' got 'em all for $25!! … the basic garden I had seen in my near future, had jumped out and grabbed me, moving near future to right NOW!! Hopefully, this future, doesn’t put me in the 'past-ure' [wink]...
I gathered the roses up, and got'em home. This greatly accelerated and necessitated the need to rapidly dust off the sundry accoutrement and remnants of our previous years container gardens, and I quickly lined out a revised battle plan of attack. The small container garden of veggies would now encompass color and flowers !!
This was quite a push, as my gardens have a mixed history - with some having been very nice and productive – and others … well, not so much.. see previous comment on 'insanity' [wink].
Now the flowers are an exciting new feature this season … and hopefully will add a nice bit of color and character to our usual cast of veggie suspects – tomatoes, peppers, squashes, cukes, herbs etc.
This year we are also toying with onions, garlic, and I'm quite excited about experimenting with fingerling potatoes. I received a wonderful selection of fantastic fingerlings donated by my Chef friend; lovely yellows, red, orange, black & blue skins – and about the size of extra large eggs. I found some great videos on YouTube on ways to grow fingerlings in burlap bags – perfect for small / container gardens.. I'll add the links below. I've also put in some Idaho baking russets from the store that had sprouted – separated in an old bin. It will be interesting to see what turns out.
I'm going with a nice simple and basic herb bed – the traditional basics – Cilantro, Basil, Mint, and Spearmint – with onions, and garlic in the separate potato bin.
We're trying out a “Topsy-Turvey “ tomato kit - you know the one on late nite infomercials. It's a hanging upside down earth filled bag, planted with a nice hardy cherry tomato, which is already thriving and has many tiny flowers. This bit of fun seems quite promising. My gardening friend had one last year, and marveled & bragged at the results. So we're enjoying the promise of a long season of cherry tomatoes.. and hopefully won't have to fend off the birds, possums, and various critters that may be laying in wait for those most delicious morsels of goodness.
Another first: We are trying to grow some items from seed. I've never done well at germinating / sprouting, but the feed n supply guy said they are almost foolproof ...usually [wink]. From seed we are going for – cukes, Asian small eggplant, and 2 exotic bushing squash.
There is a nice variety of peppers from starter plants; Mammoth jalapeno, Bell – red n yellow, banana, gypsy, jalapeno, salad cherry peppers, and one volunteer hot jalapeno that survived from last year.
Keeping the lineup simple in the tomato department – cherry [hanging basket], grape, Big Boy, Lemon Boy [yellow]...
Gardening tips
New information to me, and worthy of experimentation...
Just learned about growing potatoes in a burlap bag … wonderful stuff, and excited to give it a go... see the links.
Another green thumbed friend suggested I add Epsom Salts and a multivitamin tab in each pot as cheap fertilizer. She swears this is like magic! Apparently, the Epsom Salts are especially good for roses, tomatoes, and peppers, but makes all plants lusher and greener. My friend insists that the yield and quality was amazing and I was highly encouraged to pursue this. After Googling this, it seems to have merit and the folk lore has been around for years with good scientific and anecdotal results. Use the cheapest products, which is usually available at the 99 cent store.
So now we're off to the races... the garden is pretty much in place – Here are some photos, and a few links that I found with great information on growing potatoes , the basic 411 on Epsom salts, and using human multivitamins for the plants.
That’s about it for now... I'm reminded that a battle plan is only effective until the first shot is fired, then gets tossed immediately out the window [wink] ... hopefully we will not have too many curves in the road. The regular problems are planned for – as best as possible – the heat, drought, mosquitoes, bugz n critters... oh and laziness – rofl!
Ciao for niao – H-Town signing off until next time.
Links:
[Editor's note: Some of these sites have mandatory preview ads or other merchandising on their sites. Please exercise good computing practices when visiting any of these links.]
Videos:
Potatoes in a bag.
Fingerling Potatoes
Epsom Salt as enhancer for color and yield
Blog:
Multi-Vitamins as enhancement
[Editor's note: This story was written by A. Nonymus.]
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| Container Row |
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| Tomatoes Roses Peppers Cucumbers |
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| Herb Box |
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