Mostly I have been container gardening on my back porch. You don't need a huge garden when you are just feeding two of you, and I had seen a few books that suggested you can do quite a bit in a small space. So, I thought hey, no weeding and easy
access for watering and picking. How nifty! What exactly can I get away with just putting in a five gallon bucket or some such thing? Besides this will help me learn about my plants up close and personal.
My first year, I discovered I could fairly
successfully grow individual broccoli plants in containers (although they looked a little sickly). That year we lived on a wooded
mountain with not a lot of sunlight coming through the trees. It was pretty, but not a happy situation for vegetables. I also sort of made a raised bed out of some fallen logs beside the house and planted a yellow squash plant. Without much sun it only managed to make one tiny squash.
Year two: We now lived in our very own house. This house came with one raised bed in the backyard. It obviously had not been used in several years however. The good thing was that there was a lot more sun. That year I was fairly successful with a tomato, yellow squash,
zucchini, and mustard greens (each in a five gallon bucket on the back porch). I tried growing a couple okra plants in a bucket too. They grew okay, but don't have many pods per plant. This is one for a regular garden. I also cleared a small section of the weeds in the raised bed and attempted some broccoli, but the soil was very poor and I didn't water and feed them as I should.
Year three: Last year the real experiments began. One problem of note this year was that we had a ton of rain early in the spring and then a serious drought... Many gardens and farms around here suffered...
Back porch successes: Mr. Stripy tomato, Roma tomato, Green bell pepper (I even had enough to freeze for the winter.), mustard greens (although I planted a different species that was prickly and bloomed quickly--must look up that one for record), collard greens, and lettuce. The tomatoes and peppers started slowly and began with some blossom end rot. I read that they needed calcium and to crush up some eggshells for each plant. This helped them greatly.
Other back porch attempts: 1. cucumbers - actually grew quite well in a five gallon bucket, trained up a tomato cage and then over the porch railing, harvested a few but should have harvested them sooner to be more tender, definitely should have watered more regularly 2. beets - grew okay, but really need to have more room for the root to get adequately big 3. yellow squash - started great and harvested a few, but then it developed a fungus 4. garlic - I keep hearing that you can just break off a clove and plant it. Only one clove even ever came up, and after many months the bulb was super tiny. After several attempts, I have decided that a small pot is definitely not the way to go. I will try again this year in the raised bed. 5. peas - These actually grew quite well in a five gallon bucket trained up a tomato cage. But one bucketful of plants wasn't enough to do anything with. 6. broccoli - I started some seeds inside to transplant to pots in August. I also found some cheap broccoli plants later. The seedlings had to be kept away from green munching kitties, so they didn't get much sunlight. I was able to transplant 3 however, and they made an attempt at growing. The plants I bought did better, but still grew extremely slow. My uncle gave me some mushroom compost that he said would really help green leafy
vegies. It helped them greatly, but by then it was too late and they were frozen. Two plants still are miraculously surviving, I think, so I'm curious to see if they'll revive at all when it gets warmer. 7. spinach - same problem as broccoli, not enough water or nutrients, mushroom compost too late to make a difference
Raised bed attempts: My neighbor saw me diligently hoeing weeds in the spring and kindly offered to
rototill the whole thing. He went over the ground several times. I then added several bags of rotted cow manure and a little lime. I planted corn and okra. The corn started well, but only three okra plants even came up. I wasn't nearly as diligent about watering as I was with my containers on the back porch and nothing really came through our severe drought. In August, I hoed everything up and threw out a bunch of black-eyed peas just to see if they would sprout as a cover crop. Nope. But, at least I'm starting this year ahead of last year in the soil department.
Moving to the exotic: My husband happily brought home a banana plant a year ago with the goal of actually getting real bananas in Tennessee (ha ha). We kept it in the house until April and then
repotted it and moved it to the back porch for the summer. The move should have been a little more gradual since it got a little sunburned, but it survived and grew nicely. In September we properly acclimated it back to the house where it continued to grow nicely until our cat decided he would help water it. No matter what I tried the winner was clear: cat 1, banana 0.
I also bought my husband an avocado tree for our anniversary last fall. This is a new cold hardy, dwarf species that claims to fruit in 14 months. So far it is still doing fairly well despite our cat's best
endeavors. Hopefully it will make it another two months so we can put it outside where it will be safe.
