Hot summer afternoons weeding the garden were maybe not my favorite as a kid, but as I get older I miss the smell of soil, the sun on my back, and getting my hands full of dirt and growing things. This summer I decided to start my first garden on my own. Because I rent my home, I couldn't till up our yard, so pots and pails were my only option.
My garden:-Six 5-Gallon pails, each with a Beefsteak tomato plant
-Three planters with nine garlic cloves divided between them
-One planter with Bunching Onion Seeds
-One planter with Zinnia seeds
-One long planter with Oregano, Basil, Cilantro
To give all the plants enough soil, it took five 25-pound bags of garden soil. Even then, I noticed my first batch of tomatoes had blossom-end rot, which can be caused by lack of nutrition from the soil (no surprise, since there wasn't much soil to draw from to begin with!) After adding a couple rounds of basic Miracle-Gro, they started doing a lot better. I was surprised each five-gallon pail could produce and support so many good-sized tomatoes. The nice part about having pails was how the space between soil and the pail's lip provided support for the branches of the plants. No wire supports needed! The one thing that may differ greatly from planting in the ground is that I watered the whole garden every day. The tomato plants got 1 gallon every day at first, and as they grew and the weather got more oppressively hot, they got 2 gallons each day. I'm not sure if ground-gardeners would normally water their plants that often, but as a "pail gardener," if I missed a day, my tomato plants would wilt. No under ground moisture to draw on!
It was an adventure and I'm already thinking about next year - maybe have a go at peppers? And make salsa!
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