A lot of innovative ideas have surfaced for space and sunlight deprived urban gardens. The New York Times had an interesting article on raising tomatoes from a hanging basket, with the tomatoes growing from the bottom. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/garden/20tomato.html?hpw
A number of other ideas have also surfaced including Earth Boxes and similar self watering pots and planters. My son has planted a number of vegetables in Earth Boxes. We will know soon how they worked out. I notice that Gardeners Supply now offers all kinds of bottom watering pots and kits.
I have always used a bottom watering system for starting seed indoors (link), but have never used any of these for growing vegetables, because I have enough real space with good sunlight. Would be interested in hearing of anyone’s experience.
The traditional spring crops are in harvest and some are winding down in my Houston vegetable garden. I have picked a few tomatoes and have a lot more just about ready. As usual Merced is the earliest and most productive—too bad the seed are no longer available—followed closely by Celebrity and Homestead. Early Girl has lived up to its name but is a rather wild indeterminate with fruit of only average quality. Next year I will drop it and Floramerica and add the recommended Merced replacement mentioned in a previous post.
The green beans are through the first picking. The Contenders may give a small repeat crop and I expect Derby will give a good repeat.
Sugar snaps are finished are on the compost pile. Onions and leeks not quite ready. Beets and carrots remaining need to be harvested.
I planted a few Suyo long cucumbers on the fence and some okra seed. That will be about it for the summer while I am gone.
The Contessa onions in my Houston vegetable garden are starting to form bulbs and should be ready in a couple of weeks; hopefully before I leave for Montana. The photo on the left shows the thriving bed (the super sugar snaps in the background are about finished but have produced an unbelievable amount of peas). The picture on the right shows that the bulb is forming.
The recent newsletter from Dixondale Farms “onionman” had some interesting observations on onions that bolt prematurely to seed pods. He says it is due to stress (lack of water, too much water, etc.). I always have a few that bolt, but it seems rather random. One will bolt and the plant right next to it will not; hard to explain by the stress theory. The onionman points out that onions that bolt will not store well. In fact, when I was preparing some 1015 onions from the store today (hopefully the last I will buy for some time), the central core was turning brown. I suspect I bought an onion that had bolted.
Picked the first of the Derby beans from my Houston vegetable garden; 2 1/4 pounds from about 20 square feet. These are the beans that got "burned" rather badly from the late cold weather. They recovered beautifully. Last year my first beans also came on May 2. I also picked a tomato on May 2 last year, although it was a small outlier that ripened well before the others. The tomatoes look really good, but none are anywhere near ripe.
The Contender beans are about finished. I will leave them in and see if they repeat, but I do not expect them to repeat the way Derby beans do. The two beans are side by side and the Derby plants (left) are about twice as big. Note the flexible green wire fence to keep Esme the golden doddle out.
