Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Pea Plants!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my little sister Jessi asked me to plant some peas. The reason for this is because we have fond childhood memories of picking pea pods straight from my grandparent's garden, cracking open the pods and devoured the little morsels inside. My grandparents have always had a huge garden with several rows of pea plants.

My 12 pea plants are doing well. The roots were outgrowing the little jiffy pellets I started them in, and I don't yet have their final containers. So I decided to plant them in small peat pots for now, so their roots can continue to grow. I will be planting them in their final containers early next week (I hope).

Monday, February 21, 2011

Beans and Corn in Their Final Containers


So this weekend was really rainy and cold, so I wasn't able to work on the garden very much. So today after work, I decided it was time to finish planting the beans and the corn since they are growing so much.

I put them in those big cheap plastic containers I mentioned in an earlier post. Before planting, I did some prep work to make sure the growing conditions are good for these plants. First, I created some drainage holes near the bottom of the containers. Then, I filled the bottoms with rocks so that water can drain easier. I put three corn plants and 2-3 bean plants in each container. I'm hoping the plants will have enough space to be happy and produce some veggies.

My big problem now is keeping my dog away from my plants! She loves to destroy plants, so I'll have to watch her very closely.








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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Trial and Error


My tomato plants are not doing very well. I put my little tomato plants in those peat pots, and they totally dried out. I watered them, but not enough, and I did not notice that the dirt in the pots became hard and dry. Out of the Jiffy pellets I planted with tomatoes, I have maybe three sprouts that still look healthy. I think the peat pots make the soil dry out fairly quick, and putting them in the sunniest place I could find may not have been a good idea either.

In an attempt to recover these poor plants, I soaked the peat pots with water to be sure all the soil is moist. I moved the plants to a place that gets less direct sunlight, but is still really warm and sunny. I think I'll plant new seeds in the peat pots that have no more growth, I would really like some home grown tomatoes. I'll be watering generously from now on!

On a happier note, I read an article that suggested planting peas in hanging planters. I ordered three hanging wicker planter baskets from amazon and will be planting my peas when they arrive. The article also suggested planting sweet peas in the same containers for aesthetic purposes. So I've planted some sweet pea seeds in little peat pots and will plant them along with the regular peas. Hopefully these pea baskets will turn out really cool.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

From sprouts to small plants!

The beans are growing like mad! I'll probably try finding them a more permanent place to grow this weekend. Same with the corn, which is also looking great. I did a little research on corn, and it turns out one stalk ususally ony grows one to two (maybe three if your lucky) ears of corn. So if all six of my corn plants do well, the most I can hope for is 12 ears. I was sort of hoping that corn plants would produce more than that, but I'll take what I can get. I might not plant them again if I don't get a good crop.

I found some large plastic tubs in the garden center at Walmart. They are quite big and are only $5 each. I bough two for now, but will probably get more as I need them. I like how colorful they are.

No signs of life from my orange seeds, but I read that it could take up to six or seven weeks for these seeds to germinate. So there's still a good chance they'll grow.

A note about my patio feng shui... I've studied the principals of feng shui and I kind of subscribe to that kind of thing. It just so happens that my patio falls into the wealth and prosperity area of my living space (do a google search for bagua to find out more). This is really fortunate, because plants can really help increase the good energy of any area, so therefore, we can conclude that plants on my patio will help increase my wealth and prosperity. Also, the color red is really good to increase wealth and prosperity energy, and you'll notice that I'll be using a lot of red planters. Water fountains are also really good for feng shui, but I don't have any of those yet. I'll get one soon though.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

The stuff I've planted so far....



So I've planted several types of vegetables from seed. I've planted all my seeds using Jiffy pellets. If you're not familiar with Jiffy pellets, they are little pellets of soil that expand when you add water. Then you plant your seeds in the pellets and one plant is supposed to grow in each pellet. I chose to start this way because I don't really have any large containers yet, and there was still frost warnings a couple weeks ago when I started, and these Jiffy pellets are easy to keep inside.

I planted my first seeds two weeks ago (I think, one reason for this blog is so that I can keep track of when I plant stuff). I planted tomato plants in 12 pellets, green beans in 6 pellets, corn in 6 pellets, jalapenos in 6 pellets, and I tried planting some orange seeds from a Valencia orange that came from my mom's orange tree. The picture above was taken about 6 days ago when things were starting to sprout. I also planted some peas last week because my little sister requested some. I planted 12 pellets of these.

So how have these seeds progressed so far, you ask? Well, let me tell you...


This is my corn crop today. I had to move them to these party cups because their roots were getting so long and broke out of their pellets and were invading other plant's pellets. The corn seems to be the fastest growing crop. I read that these can be grown in individual 5 gallon containers. I've also read that you can put multiple corn plants in a single large container. Not sure what I'm going to do yet. For now, they stay in the cups. They are sitting outside on my windowsill.



This is one of my bean plants. I planted "Tendergreen Improved" beans. They are "bush" beans rather than "pole" beans. I figured a bush of beans would be easier to manage than the pole variety. At this point, I'm not sure if multiple beans can be planted in the same container, or if each plant needs it's own container. I'm also concerned that I picked the wrong bean variety for container gardening. One website I found said these are not recommended for containers. I guess we'll see....



The pots you see here are the tomato plants today. They are on a windowsill on the front of my house. I have 12 plants total. I planted multiple tomato seeds per Jiffy pellet, and then removed all but the strongest plant in each pellet. While I was at the Walmart garden center I saw a package of Jiffy peat pots for like, $1.50 or something, which comes with 14 pots. I decided that I should move my tomato plants to these pots before their roots outgrow the pellets. I obviously need to move these to bigger containers eventually, but I'm also not sure if tomatoes need their own containers or if they can share. I also don't know how large of a container I need.

Getting proper containers for all these plants is going to get costly, so I'm going to get more containers each week to spread the cost over time. Yesterday I got some really large containers that I might try putting the beans in, or the peas (they are just starting to sprout).

No life yet from the orange seeds. Maybe they got frozen while on the tree, or maybe I planted them wrong. I'm still hoping they'll sprout, but it's not looking very good.


I planted some herbs (actual plants, not seeds) about three weeks ago. This is a picture of them. I have mint, chives, basil, and rosemary. The mint seems to have the most new growth since I planted these in this container. The basil and chives also have new growth, but the rosemary has pretty much stayed the same. Yesterday I put some basil, rosemary, and chives on a frozen cheese pizza to liven it up, and it was delicious. I've been using the mint in my iced tea, which is has been really good.

I'll be posting again within the next couple days. This has been a fun project so far and my goal is to get some vegetables out of this. I've also been working with decorative plants too, which I will blog about later. Please feel free to leave advice if you have any, I could use some! Also, comments are welcome :)

I want to grow food!

Hi All,

A couple weeks ago, I decided that I want to make a garden. The problem is that I live in a town house that does not have a backyard. The solution to this problem is to create a container garden!

I've already started and I'm really excited. I live in Arizona and the weather right now is BEAUTIFUL, so I've decided to start this garden perhaps a little earlier than most people would. I think there is no more frost danger and if there is, I can bring my plants indoors.

I've decided to blog about this little project because I figure some people would be interested. Also, I've seen a bunch of pictures and you tube videos about starting a container garden, but they mainly just show how to start a container garden. I have not seen a lot of photos/videos of the plants actually producing food.

Oh yeah, I'm planting mostly vegetables because I want to harvest food. I think it would be awesome to preserve the veggies if I have extra by canning or freezing. We'll see if I get that far.

So this is my introduction. I'm going to see if I can take a few pics of my project's current status and will make a second post here in a bit about what I have going on right now. Hope you enjoy!

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