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Late summer squash

Started a few squash plants indoors over the last couple of weeks. Transplanted to a self watering container today. This time I drilled 4 holes in the lid so after the seedling was planted, a wire cage could be inserted. Now, as the plant grows, I do not have to find created ways to stake the plant as it gets taller. I do not know why I did not think of this with the tomatoes. We had a couple of massive wind storms early in the season and nearly lost 2 plants. I should have pre-staked them!

Basil a plenty

Thanks, Kait, for this ever producing basil plant. This is in a self watering container (aka, recycled kitty litter container) and gets regular feedings with Dutch Master gold grow nutrient. This plant came as a seedling and is now 1.5 feet tall and we can't eat it fast enough.

I suppose this dispels the old southern myth that you should never thank the giver of a plant for it will lead to its demise.

Peppers on the Vine

Here are a couple of peppers growing in a topsy turvy made especially for peppers. You can search our posts and find photos of this hanging on the front porch earlier in the season. It has openings for 8 plants. When these wrap up in a couple of weeks, I am going to plant a late summer crop of fish peppers and nosegay peppers (ornamental marble size) to carry us into the fall. These seedlings are growing now under a sunsystem HPS 150. They are nearly ready for transplant outdoors. I will start hardening them off tomorrow.

Waterfarm - General Hydroponics

Here is a batch of delicious variety tomatoes growing in a waterfarm from General Hydroponics.

It drinks about a gallon every 72 hours at this growth rate. Adding nutrient at each refill. These are ready to pick.

Time to Say Goodbye

It was time to say goodbye to a batch of hydroponic tomato plants. This set up had 3 pickle buckets tethered by a 1/2 inch black hose at the bottom of each bucket to allow the nutrient to free flow back and forth. A pump in one bucket pumped the nutrient up into another 1/2 in black hose forming a circle and then drip lines were run to each plant. The plants had pretty much run their course and I decided it was time to break them down. This is the root ball of one of the plants. I believe this was a delicious/jetsonic tomato.

Gardening Video Part 1

Here is a gardening video Dad shot while in town about a month ago. Follow the youtube link. There are 3 parts, lasting about 4 minutes each. This video will show you our front porch garden and several of the plants and systems we are using.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0sWhYmCNz4

Jalapenos Hydroponicos

Azalea Bonsai

Blooming!

Color Explosion!

Medusa ornamental pepper.

Turkish Eggplant

Orange you glad these aren't bananas?

Heirloom Tomatoes

Green Zebra and some Cherokee Purples.

Carnival Bell Pepper.

Purple.

Mini Bell Pepper

Bite size.

Volcano Pepper Recipe

This is Carol's recipe: Slice peppers in half, remove seeds and ribs. fill pepper slices with a mixture of cottage cheese, tomato pieces and cucmber pieces. The cottage cheese helps make the peppers not so spicy. Delicious.

Rejects!

Here is a list of things we didn't especially like and will not do again probably:

Volcano peppers-We like these and they grow really well and produce a lot of fruit but we just don't eat them that much. They are a little spicy for my taste and there are so many of them we can't give them all away. Maybe we just planted too many. I don't know why we even plant hot peppers in the first place because we don't really ever eat them.

Carnival bells-We like these bell peppers o.k. but not enough to grow again. They are unique because they are small and colored but the novelty wears off. Also, we didn't like the taste as much as a traditional bell pepper.

Jetsonic tomatoes- We got these as freebies when we ordered seed this year. They have an o.k. flavor but we would rather use the space for something more delicious. The plants act determinate only reaching about 2 feet.

Georgia Streak heirloom tomatoes-We didn't have good luck with these at all. We gave them the same care as all the other tomatoes but only ended up getting a couple tomatoes off of two plants. They seem more prone to rotting than any of the others we grew. Also the taste was good but not exceptional.

Red Velvet okra-I don't know if this is the norm or if something went horribly wrong but our plants only grew about 2 feet tall as opposed to head high for green okra and only produced about 2 pieces per plant. Also the okra was tough and not really good eatin'. Chris says "If you want to serve this for dinner give your guests a hack saw in addition to a fork." Ha Ha.

Turkish Eggplant- We didn't grow any of these here in container pots and our soil garden didn"t do so hot this year so we may be biased based on our own inabilities to grow these. They were smaller than we expected (about golfball size as opposed to softball size). They grew pretty well considering the trouble we had with the soil garden so I think in the right conditions they would probably produce a lot. The taste is pretty good. Not as tough and dry as a normal black eggplant. Overall, we like these but didn't grow them very well so I would not be averse to trying again sometime in the future but maybe not next year.

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Things we for sure want to re-plant next summer because we liked them this year:

Green Zebra heirloom tomatoes-We didn't get a lot of fruit but they are the best tasting of all the tomatoes we have grown. We both agree.

Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes-We got a lot of fruit from the two plants we had and they are really delicious. Second place taste to Green Zebras.

Patio tomatoes-We got tons of fruit from the one plant we had. Tons! They taste pretty good too.

Carolina Gold heirloom tomatoes-We only got a couple of these off the one plant we had but they are really sweet and delicious. We would like to try again next year for a higher yield.

Mini Bells-These are bite-size bell peppers. They have a delicious taste and they are still producing into August.

Preparing for Fall

Getting ready now for the fall growing season. Picked up some squash and broccoli seed and got it planted. Going to take scrupulous notes on all the details of seed starting for record keeping purposes. Planted the squash and broccoli seed today. Will get fall leeks going in a couple of weeks. Using a HPS 150 light to for the seedlings once they get going.

Moon and Stars Watermelon

This is the only edible fruit so far from the moon and stars watermelon patch. This one is about 5 pounds. About 10 watermelon have grown or are growing in the patch now. Taken 3 out so far to eat only to have 2 of them raw in the middle. Ate some for breakfast this morning. Very good fruit, but lots of seeds. The plant is doing well in the garden, but not sure really how to tell when they are ripe. This is an heirloom variety and we will likely not plant this type next year.

Mini Herb Garden

This mini garden is doing quite well. The growing medium is coco. I keep it watered and use nutrient a couple times a week. Chives, parsley and basil.

Front Porch Gardening?

In keeping with the spirit of our home garden, I decided it was time to upgrade the blog to an easy to remember URL, along with promoting how to's on container gardening. We do not have space or enough sunlight in our backyard to create a purposeful garden. Everything we are growing is in container pots on our front porch. I have manufactured them from 5 gallon pickle buckets along with purchased items such as the earthbox and waterfarm hydroponic systems.

By using container pots, the plants are kept off the ground and away from crawling predators. In the pots, the soil can be customized to our particular needs. Compost can be added as well. We are planning on expanding our garden next year. We currently use a relatives back yard for our standard soil garden, but contemplating using only container pots next year along with an array of hydroponics to further control the growing environment.

Homegrown Evolution

I learned a lot of container gardening along with many other great ideas for urban gardening at the homegrown evolution website. I have their book in the library and I highly recommend picking up a copy!

http://www.homegrownevolution.com

Blog - Website Update

Hello everyone,

Maggie and I are going to update the blog slowly with new content and a new format. We have been working a lot lately at our jobs and are running behind getting our fall crops ready.

I pulled up the yellow pear from the topsy turvy and planted a small better boy sapling. The volcano peppers are working overtime, but too hot for my colon to enjoy, so we are giving those away. We had a good run of tomatoes this year. The green zebra and carolina gold tasted the best, but only produced a small run of fruits. The hydroponic tomatoes did not taste as good as the container potted plants, but we had a ton more fruit, with more still ripening on the vine.

Planted 9 fish pepper seed trays and 9 marble (nosegay) ornamental peppers from seed that i picked up at seedsavers exchange online.

Medusa updated!

Here is the medusa pepper in full bloom!

Demon Spawn

Front Porch

Medusa

Medusa ornamental peppers grown hydroponically in an earthball.

Succulent

This is a cactus we got at the farmers market. It is called "Stone Faces".

Size Comparisons

On top we have our largest tomato so far- a Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato and on the bottom- a leaf from our eggplant. Both growing on the porch.

Erupting Volcano

One of many Volcano peppers growing on our front porch.

New Bonsai

We got this new bonsai in Asheville. It is an azalea and it is about 4 years old.

Patio Tomatoes!

Green Zebra!

Green Zebra!

Basil

Chris is growing this basil in a little planter his kids got him for fathers day. He planted it last week.

Ornamentals

Chris got these from Swartz Gardens in Castle Hayne and replaced the strawberry plants in the strawberry tower with them. One is an ornamental pepper and we're not sure what the other is.

Tomato Crop

We picked the red tomatoes from the garden at Brenda's house and I believe they are mostly Georgia Streaks and the Yellow Pears we got from our topsy turvy.

Venus Fly Trap

We also got this at the farmers market this week. We had one a couple of years ago and it died pretty soon after we got it. I think Chris fed it hamburger meat or something. I'm not allowing him to do that this time so maybe it will last a while and maybe it will catch some flys for us.

Wheat Grass

We recently started growing wheat grass. Chris got a kit and some seed and a juicer from Progressive Gardens a couple of weeks ago and we grow it under one of our fluorescent growlights. You are supposed to drink 1-2 shots a day of it and it is a natural detox. I've only had a couple of shots so far because it just got tall enough to cut. It tastes pretty gross to me and I almost barf when i drink it but I do feel better throughout the day after drinking it so we'll see.

Farmers Market in Asheville

We got these two different plants this week at the farmers market in Asheville. One is thyme and the other is an orchid. If anyone knows anything about growing orchids any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Changes for Next Year's Garden

Here are some notes on things we plan to change next year and some general obvservations about our garden.

• no red okra. they are more ornamental than edible. Too tough, not enough fruit.
• no Jetsonic tomatoes. These were "freebie" seeds we received in the mail. They appear to be determinate, although i am sure packaging says otherwise. they all got to about 24 inches and stopped growing. fruits are small and not many blooms. Boo.
• all tomatoes growing hydroponically next year will likely be patio's. we have some green zebras and other varieties. they are very heaving in foliage and outgrowing the hydro systems they are in. i am running out of room to stake them. the patio in the SWC has more fruit on it than any indeterminate plant we have so far.
• no cherry tomatoes. they are too small to enjoy. the yellow pear and tom toms are heartier and better in salads and for small snacks. do not want to waste garden real estate on tomatoes the size of raisins.
• likely will plant cherokee purple and georgia streaks in all SWC and in the regular garden next year. these are producing well with large fruit and healthy vines. contrary to all southern gardeners, we only planted one of the "better boy" (gasp!) this year. it is in the homemade topsy turvy.
• hydroponic eggplant is growing so much better than in soil garden. i had an extra plant and put in the autopot so it would not go to waste. the foliage and size are triple that of the soil counterpart.

With respect to hydroponics:

• we are using or have used the following systems

1. autopot
2. drip system using grodan
3. deep water culture with air circulation
4. waterfarm
5. wick method using coco and perlite

here is what we have noticed....

• the autopot has the most consistent results. good vegetative growth. the smart valve works well. we built our own autopot from rubbermaid trays and pickle buckets as a reservoir.
• the waterfarm is slow to start, but has a nice size tomato in it now. uses a lot of nutrient. at this point, almost every 3 days, it runs out.
• the DWC seems to be the most self reliant and easy to use. the nutrient has never run dry. the roots drop down into the nutrient. the gap between the nutrient and the top of the roots provides oxygen uptake. there is always some root mass "underwater". i top it off every few days.
• the perlite/coco mix with wick system works well too. this has a medusa pepper in a grobal system. i like this method
• the drip system is the most work. i will not create another. it uses a butt load of nutrient. the drip lines clog easily. they pop out of the little stakes. the plants are growing well. almost too well. the tomato is so big, it is staked and tied and staked so more. as a result, it drinks a lot of nutrient. takes up a lot of space, the pump had to be put in a net bag to prevent the roots from clogging the uptake. must keep nutrient at a certain level or the pump will run dry.

The Patio Tomatoes!

The first tomato off the vine. No chemicals, no funky fertilizers. Just water, good soil, tiger bloom and botanicare plant nutrients. Delicious.

Couple of happy snaps at Carol's House

Here are some random photos are the things blooming around carol's house. Maggie is taking a break by resting in their new hammock.

Mini Bell's

These are mini bellpeppers growing here. They have really gotten quite large and now have blossoms.