Introduction

I planted a garden. In fact, it’s a container garden. I make self-watering garden containers from 55-gallon barrels and I grow things in them. I have three of them right now and want to expand. I’m going to use this blog to log my activities in my garden. I’m just going to jump right in - the story up to this point isn’t very interesting. The short version is that I had a tomato plant and two bell pepper plants. The pepper plants produced very well until a windstorm broke one of the plants and generally disheveled the other one. The tomato plant was also doing very well - until the worms got to it. Between them and the increasing heat the plant was pretty much done for. We ended up getting more than a dozen tomatoes though. I made a third container and put bush beans in it. Most of them died, so I added a ginger plant.

Garden Log

Container 1

  • Bush beans - bush beans are growing steadily but not crazy. Leaves look a bit pale/yellow in some places. There are buds on the beans now, so maybe we’ll have beans soon
  • Two flowers - I forget what they’re called. They’ve rebounded from their previous malaise.
  • Ginger - There’s some impressive leaves on the ginger. It doesn’t look to be crowded out by the beans yet.

Container 2

  • Tomato plant - Completely dead now, all tomatoes gone. It’s time to re-purpose this container

Container 3

This container is currently shaded.

  • Parsley - Still growing, but not going crazy. Looks pretty happy for the most part.
  • Big pepper plant - It’s still alive, though several branches have rotted and fallen off/been picked off. There are blooms on several suckers near the base of the plant. I think I will leave them - especially with the branches that fell off. The plant is growing up a lot and will soon touch the shade. The new growth is making bugs
  • Rooted pepper plant - It had some suckers on it before but I don’t see any now1
  • Pepper plant sprout attempts - Generally, bad. Most are dead. Some of the healthier ones have tiny roots coming out but are also rotting at the same time. Who knows which process will win first?

Plan

Container 1

Plant some turmeric in the side where the bush beans died.

Container 2

Take out the tomato plant and put a cherry tomato plant there. Find a variety of cherry tomato that

Container 3

Remove dying/dead pepper plants by 6/24/17 and plant some herbs there - parsley or cilantro.

Container 4

When I make one I’ll plant eggplant or sweet potatoes.

Harvest Log

Harvest Date Green Pepper Tomato (Beefsteak) Beans
Up to now 12 11 0
6/17/17 2 5(3) 0
Total 14 14 0

To Do

  • Research cherry tomato varieties to buy
  • Find a convenient local nursery
  • Research eggplant
  • Research sweet potatoes

Resources

  • This page has a good list of summer crops for Florida