Garden Update Mid-March

Big, Beefy and Robust!

These are beefsteak tomatoes. There are about twenty tomatoes in various stages of development in the first pot and they are still blooming like crazy. There are three tomato plants in each pot. I am guessing that each pot will produce probably fifty or so tomatoes.

The second pot was planted about two weeks after the first and the three plants in it are just starting to bloom. The third pot was started a month after the first pot and the blooms are beginning to develop.

Apparently I will be able to grow plenty of tomatoes. This will be handy for making sauces and soup, I like tomato soup. Because of this I have decided to add dried pasta, probably small elbow macaroni, to my survival stores. It's very cheap and hardy enough to withstand moving around without crumbling in a five gallon bucket. Now that I know I can produce a lot of tomatoes fairly easily it opens up my meal options.

The issue I am running into now is lack of southern window space. It takes alot of room to grown these plants. Now that the deep freezing is over I will look into starting some plants at the cabin, it has many more southern windows. I am also exploring a new powerless watering system so I can leave them unattended for a couple of weeks at a time. I will talk more about that on Monday.

A possible solution to the lack of windows is the upside down tomato planter. A while back some contributers suggested this option to the space issue. Now this window in the picture is actually facing south east so the plants here only get morning sun, but it is better than nothing.

I am using a two gallon bucket with a two inch hole cut in the bottom. There is a beefsteak tomato sticking out the hole and a cherry tomato planted in the top. The water runoff drips into a newly planted pot with three beefsteak tomatoes. You really need alot of water for the hanging pot to soak through to the hanging tomato.

The other planter has three carrots planted in it. Not sure they will grow but I like carrots so I thought I'd try it. The two white five gallon buckets are full of rice and are part of my survival supplies. That's Conway looking out the window.

One other thing, make sure your hanging bucket is well designed. The wire handles on the ones I use are starting to pull through the plastic.

My green beans are blooming. These were planted on January 28th and are doing very well. The last batch of Contenders I planted were stunted and have yet to yield any beans. They only grew to six inches and stopped not sure why.

I have three Tender Improved green bean plants to get in the pots as well as three pea plants. All the green beans so far have been bush bean. I have only planted one other pea plant and it died so hopefully I will have better luck with these.