Tag Archives: plants

How Does Your Garden Grow

Enloe Farms, , , ,

e779d-gramingreenhouseFor many years The Farmer and I  put in a fairly nice sized garden. We planted about 12 tomato plants, 2 rows of green beans, some peppers, onions, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers and whatever other plants my Dad would give me from his greenhouse.

My parents own A & N Greenhouse, out on Hwy 47 towards Potosi. (you know where that is if you live locally) It’s too late this year, but that’s the place to go when you want really good garden plants and flower baskets.

Ok, back to my story. As I was saying, we

used to put in a nice sized garden. A couple of years ago, Daughter #1 enlightened me to the efficiency and ease of square foot gardening.  I really loved the idea. The Farmer made boxes for the plants, we put down a weed cloth to deter weed growth,  we sectioned off the boxes into 1 ft. squares, and then we planted the vegetables according to a chart that I had drawn up. I was really excited to do this, because square foot gardening was supposed to be easier (less weeding), until I saw The Farmer re-seeding the yard around the boxes. When he was finished, the garden was full of grass seed. It didn’t take me long to lose interest in this gardening style (there were still weeds!)

So the gardening set idle for a season or two, until we determined that we were going to have fresh garden tomatoes on our BLTs. We both like the idea of having a garden, but he doesn’t have time to weed the garden and I don’t want to. 🙂 So, necessity being the mother of invention, we came up with what I thought would be a simple plan–patio gardening.

Here’s what we did:

Early one morning, The Farmer went out to get our special mix of highly organic soil. This is the field where the cows winter. A visitor came as he was mixing the fertilized soil with peat moss. At one time these tubs contained protein supplement for the cows. I guess Otis (the bull) remembered, but wasn’t interested when he found that The Farmer was filling it up with dirt.

The Farmer mixed the soil and peat moss, and loaded the tubs into the bucket of the tractor. He used the bucket of the tractor to lift the tubs on to the back deck. I know it looks like he does all the work, but I planted the tomatoes and peppers, and harvested them each time we used them…and cooked ALL the bacon (everytime). 🙂

We only did 3 tubs. You can see the remnant of the sq. ft. garden in the background. I planted 1 tomato plant and 2 pepper plants in each tub. I later discovered that I should have planted the pepper plants in a tub by themselves. Live and learn!

Update: the buckets worked well. We had plenty of tomatoes that summer, and they were easily accessible. This method does require a LOT of watering, especially on hot, humid days. But the weeds are minimal.