Container garden - wk 10

I've missed posting for a few weeks. It has been a busy summer for us so far. Lots of activities and just playing outside. And we took our first family camping trip! I swore my version of 'camping' included a motel at the very least, but we met up with my best friend and her family and went camping in a tent! And you know what? It was awesome!! We've already booked our second trip of the summer, and hope to even do a third.

And in the meantime, my garden has been growing, and growing, and grooooowing!

So here is the update. I took these pictures last week, about the Week 10 mark.

Here are the herbs and Batch 3 potatoes. I've been harvesting the basil which is doing great. The cilantro seeds I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted and are growing quickly. The potatoes are big, but who can tell what's happening underneath.



The tomatoes!!! My awesome awesome tomatoes! They're all still green, but there are so many of them. It's crazy! We're going to turn red once they ripen as we'll be eating so many tomatoes.





The spinach and lettuce have bolted. The spinach was yummy, I will definitely do spinach again. But I didn't like the lettuce. I did a leaf lettuce (Early Curled Simpson), and I found it limp, wilty and tasteless. While on vacation, we stayed with my sister in law who is growing her first garden, and she had an awesome leaf lettuce and made us a great salad. I'm going to try her variety next year (I forget the name, I have to remember to ask her again!).

And in the same picture is the zucchini. Holy Moly, the zucchini! It's huuuuuuge. It's completely taken over the container, is running over the lettuce, and I have to keep cutting it back from totally covering my carrots. We've been harvesting the sweet tender young zucchini's, and jebus was it yummy. I thought I had some time before the next harvest, yet tonight my stepdad pointed out a huge zucchini that I swear wasn't there yesterday. Grilled zucchini, roasted zucchini, baked zucchini, stir fried zucchini, zucchini bread, chocolate zucchini muffins...




The beets are beets. You can just start to see the tops of them, but they're still pretty tiny. It will be a while yet before we get to eat those.



The potatoes are great. There were flowers, and now the foliage is starting to fall over. It has been super hot here for a couple weeks, I don't think they liked that much. Next week I'm going to try harvesting one. Hopefully they'll be the yummy little 'new' potatoes, yum!! I missed taking pics, but they don't look that much different, just a little bigger then last time.

And my peas. Sigh, my peas. I love peas. I love eating fresh peas right in the garden, shucking them, eating them and thowing the pods back in the garden. I was so excited for my peas. And they were doing well! So well! These picturs taken last week, they still look like they're doing well. Although on closer look, you could maybe tell something was starting to go wrong. And now, one container from Batch 1 is all pretty much dead. And the other two containers from Batch 1 are looking sad. It doesn't seem to be pests, my stepdad mentioned perhaps a fertilizing issue (nitrogen poisoning?). I don't know. There were a ton of peas growing, but they've all stalled and though some of the pods are getting bigger, when you open them, there are no peas inside. Batch 2 is still looking pretty good, so fingers crossed I haven't lost them all!



My peppers are surprisingly great! I have two hot peppers about ready to harvest, and several small sweet peppers. While the plants are much bigger then when I bought them, I don't know if they'll be big enough to make grocery store sized peppers. Right now they're about golf ball sized peppers.





My front flower garden is doing really great. The scarlett runner beans threaten to attack anyone who stands too close. I've added extra, taller supports, and they covered those in literally days. Not sure what else I can do. I might get a super long piece of wood (1"x1" or so) and pound that in the middle. Otherwise I think they may just reach across the lawn and crawl up our tree! The sweet peas have bloomed and are wonderful. I cut a bunch for my first 'bouquet'. They looked much better on the plant I have to admit! The cosmos are so tall. I didn't realize how tall they'd be. And they're so close to blooming. But nothing yet. One thing I don't like about them is they are covered in ants. I'm guessing they're like peonies where the ants crawl all over them and eat the sap which allows them to bloom. But it's kindof icky when you look really close! The pansies look good. Can't go wrong with pansies. But one thing I did do wrong was try and put a dahlia in the middle of a container and surrounded it by pansies. The pansies grew way bigger, completely covered the dahlia, which is now dead. Oh well, live and learn! The snapdragons are in full bloom with lots of great colours. And the osteospermum are okay. They don't bloom nearly as amazingly as when I first got them, but there are always a few flowers every day, and the greens are so pretty on their own.



And the sunflowers and marigolds are looking great. The marigolds are blooming nicely, and the sunflowers are growing steadily. Can't wait to see what they'll look like!



And that's it for now! I probably won't update this week (it's hard playing catch up), but plan on definitely posting Week 12's update. Hopefully the peas will still be in the picture!