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First 3 Weeks of Gardening: We Dig It

June 1, 2009

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I’ve been sharecropping for several weeks now, and although I tried to steer us closer to veggies that were suitable for children to grow, we ended up with 3 container gardens full of veggies and herbs.  Hot damn, I’m practically a farmer! Here’s the soybean with another post.

The plants and seeds made it into the ground two weeks ago and we just can’t contain our excitement. So much so that we forgot to write about the process. But we did document it with photos. Here’s what we ended up planting: roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, green onions, summer squash, radishes, jalapeno, green peppers, yellow peppers, basil, cilantro, parsley, cucumber, beets, buttercrunch lettuce, arugula, snow peas, and sweet peas!  The following are pictures of one of the three planter boxes.

Container Garden: Week 0
Container Garden: Week 1

Week 0: Planted peas, beets, tomatoes, arugula, butter lettuce
Week 1: Sweet peas, beets, and arugula germinated!

Week 2: Sweet peas and arugula growing like crazy!

Container Garden: Week 2


We edited the original container garden plan slightly to allow for the peas to grow in a north – south line and make the most of the space. As you can see in the above pics, the pea trellis is pretty tall and we’re hoping a wild wind doesn’t take it down (fingers crossed).

Our latest gardening dilemma is how often and how much to water.  We are currently watering every other day, by putting the hose into each box for about 2 – 3 minutes.  Any thoughts on watering?

container-garden-boxes-blueprint-planting
  • thesoybean
    June 11, 2009 at 8:03 pm

    Thanks, Bailey. We didn’t research watering needs when making our planting plans. Right now the main problem stems around the definition of “water deeply”… I’ve heard 2 inches of water per week on average, but also that raised beds need considerably more water. To further confuse things, it has still been raining here in Portland!

  • Unbrick Psp
    June 11, 2009 at 8:25 am

    Love your blog, have been following it for a while now. Really good looking wordpress theme too, what is it?

  • Bailey
    June 9, 2009 at 9:10 am

    While the plants are young you should continue to water several times per week. Once the plants become more established, you should begin watering very deeply once per week. This will help encourage your plants to grow deep roots. Depending on how deeply you dug down when forming your beds (which tends to dictate how much water the soil can “hold”) you maybe be able to even water less often than that in some beds.

    Next season, I would suggest that you examine water needs of the individual plants and help use that to plan your beds. Lettuces tend to require consistently moist soil (not swamped!) whereas too much water can make tomatoes tasteless. As a general rule of thumb, use your thumb! Dig down into the soil a few inches. If things are still damp down there, then give it another day.

    Hope this helps!