Saturday, July 16, 2011

More Adventures in Container Gardening, ugh gardening!!!!! Time to plan for fall :)

So my beautiful organic garden was off to such a great start this year my strawberries had started to mature, my tomatoes were growing, and my lettuce was doing great, my flowers looked awesome!. Then the heatwave hit and my poor garden has been getting its butt kicked. My first problem is that we do not have a hose so we have to cart water out of the house to do all of our watering (for next year I am working on a rain collection system that I can use to irrigate).  Our second problem is that I did not anticipate the early heat that killed my lettuce and tomatoes I could've moved my tomatoes inside oh well lesson learned. So with all that said on to the good news my herbs are doing great and the tomatoes that did grow were awesome as well as the lettuce that we grew was great. Now I am working on planning my fall garden I am doing some container gardening but mostly planting in the back yard. This time I have plotted out my plan on graphing paper and thought more deeply about adding more compost and natural fertilizer to the soil whether it's through the use of fertilizer tea or my favorite low cost way watered down urine (1 part urine to 20 parts water works well for us) .  To assist in my planning my favorite resource is the from the Mississippi Department of Agriculture website in their publications page they have a produce availability and planting guide it breaks down each zone in the state and which plants should be planted when.  So that's where we are my kids are still having a blast they love eating everything we have grown and I am certainly NOT giving up.