Cucumber Trellis

Here's a picture of my cucumber pot today~ there are some sticks for the beginning trellis and yesterday I added the metal swirl (bent from a coat hanger) which the Boston cuke has already grabbed on to with a few vines. Tomorrow I plan to hike out into the woods to find some more branches for a natural trellis~ I love the way it looks and its free!

To be honest I am not a huge fan of cucumbers, so I look forward to trying different pickle recipes in the future~ especially spicy pickles with some jalapenos we grow!

Now I am trying to decide if we have space for a worm composting bin because I plan to garden winter plants as well, and hopefully keep it going in the containers until I own land to do what I want and create more permanent structures.

More Gardening, Less Camping

We haven't camped out in Lenny in a few weeks, the last time was just at a friend's house for a night. I had planned to go camping for a few days for my birthday but the weather was too cool in the areas I wanted to go with scattered storms so we ended up moving into a new house which gives me a lot more space for my plants~

Most of them are in Lowes or Home Depot buckets, but some I have been able to find and re-purpose. Usually there is too much paint or plaster in them to re-use for food plants though. My soil mixture I got out of a greenhouse book~ 1 part top soil 1 part peat moss 1 part vermiculite. The vermiculite is enriched with fertilizers so I haven't had to fertilize yet.
To keep slugs away I always have beer out in 2 cat food dishes which is perfect for slugs to crawl in, get drunk and drown. I also like to spritz the leaves with soap nut solution (2 soap nuts per 1 cup water, boiled 30 min and cooled) and used the left over soap nuts to rub around the rim of the buckets. So far, so good! My cat lies around the buckets a lot during most days so hopefully that will help deter squirrels, and this week I plan to get one of those fake owls to guard my fruits and veggies from other creatures. The buckets help protect from bunnies though~ a plus!

"Sweet 100" Variety Tomato

First Bean I got to eat~ beans sprout, grow and produced the quickest

2 Variety Cucumber, Dill and Carrots in 20'' Pot
(adding more sticks for natural trellis)
today as I write this they are already much bigger

"Better Bush" Tomato~ has 9 now!

Only Tomato that survived from seed~ she's quite the Champ!!

In all I have~
3 Tomato plants and 3 Jalapenos that are pretty mature that I bought as seedlings from stores
3 Bush Beans grown from seed
1 Cucumber bought from store
1 Basil plant bought from store
1 cilantro plant bought from store (and not doing well)
1 cucumber started from seed
1 tomato started from seed
lots of~ Jalapenos, Bell Peppers, Dill, Carrots, Onions all started from seed

I thought most of the pepper seedlings would die off but surprisingly none of them did so now I am over run with baby pepper seedlings, but I am quickly finding out that they make great gifts!

Hopefully today will be the last run to the store for buckets and soil mixtures!