Progress Report

Haven't done a whole lot, but things are coming along.  I planted a series of 34 cm pots with mustard and lettuce, and one 57 cm with radish greens.  I figure the greens are the most important nutritionally, so they come first.

The lettuce only went into the pots from the seedling trays recently, Nov. 18-21, yet they're ready for a little picking today on Dec. 1.

Here's what the mustard looks like, even though I've been picking leaves from the plants regularly.  They just keep on growing like crazy.

And there are loads of sweet potatoes ready for harvest from the containers too.  Here's a typical Hannah potato.  Time to harvest them and plant new crops in those pots they're in.  They can actually keep going year-round here, but it's best to rotate them with something unrelated like beans.

I'm still getting hot peppers from my plants, but I just started new seed in wet paper towels.  My current favorites are Jwala and Caribbean Red.  And the seedlings I started a while back are ready to separate now...turnip greens, radish greens, onion, tatsoi, chard, etc.

Out of 25 carrot seedlings I separated and planted in individual 8 cm pots, I currently have 24 still doing fine.  So the maxim that you can't transplant carrots is definitely bad info.

We're into what's looking like a potentially horrendous fire season...no measurable rain in well over a month...and this isn't the real fire season yet, that starts in February.  I've got a lot of brush I need to clear out and run through the shredder, so the gardening might not get my full attention this cool season.  And it's been hot, well above average.  Today was warm, half-cloudy, and muggy.

But I'm not complaining, I figure any day where I can still get out of bed in the morning and get some things done is a good day. Today I cleared some brush and sickled some tall grass and weeds. Got to keep moving.

For the metrically-challenged, my pots where all that mustard and lettuce is currently growing are a little over a foot and a half wide. The bigger mustard leaves are about two feet long and about half that wide...doesn't take many to make a pot of soup at that size.  I figure if my plants are just growing slowly but not thriving, something is wrong and I try to fix it.  Never settle for less than thriving plants in your garden, they're far more nutritious than half-yellow, sickly ones.

Growing in pots doesn't mean you're settling for less, necessarily. Eight of those 57 cm pots I use holds a cubic yard of potting soil, that's a lot of soil.  And in the pots, you don't have to contend with ground-dwelling animals like moles or rabbits because you can move them around and elevate them out of reach.  This time of year it takes a lot of water to hydrate a garden if the underlying sand is all bone dry.  Growing in nursery pots avoids all those troubles.

If we get a little rain now and then, maybe the planting beds make more sense.  But so far it looks like we're going to stay really dry.