5 GALLON BUCKET GARDENING

Recently, 2nd Man and I were talking about how we didn't get our garden up and running for this year.  So many other expenses we've had along the way, that was one we just couldn't justify this season (building raised beds, clearing land, putting a fence, the soil, etc is expensive).  Plus we aren't exactly sure of the spot.

Still, I've had the itch to grow some veggies.  Then I remembered a growing method I've seen online and after some research, off to the store I went one day on my lunch break.

An hour later, I had two 5 gallon buckets (food safe), a large bag of potting soil and a couple of plants!

Now this time of year, garden vegetable plants are few and far between.  Mostly tomatoes and peppers but hey, we're OK with that.

I grabbed a jalapeño and a tomato.  Got them outside and I was ready to start.  I was so excited.

Got the drill with a 3/8" drill bit.  That is a good size for the drainage holes, about the biggest you want to go without losing soil to draining.  Also grabbed a sharpie and a ruler.  The holes don't HAVE to be even but it bugs me if they're not because "I" would know, ha!

I marked them, eight around the outside and four in the middle.  Then I marked four around the sides at the bottom, about an inch up.  This just helps any standing water in the bottom drain out quickly.

Here they are after drilling.

I got the potting soil out. This is the brand we always used in our raised beds and it worked great for us.  This one bag was enough for both buckets with about a 1/3 left over for other uses (or other buckets, ha).

You fill them up to a little higher than you might think it should be and then you water it until water runs out the holes in the bottom.  This will also let it settle.

Here is a great example... you can see the soil had dropped a little and you can see the water running out the bottom.  All is good and ready for planting!

Next, I had to get the tomato ready for planting.  Tomatoes like to be buried deep so you should cut off the leaves and small branches on the bottom 1/3 of the plant so it can go deeper into the soil and develop a strong root system. 

Here it was when I was done.  Nice and bare and ready for planting.

I dug the hole deep so that it would be buried as it should and then filled in around it.

Here they are!  Planted, climbing cage put in place, and now both are ready to go.  Hopefully, they will provide us some vegetables.

We have a "Heatmaster" tomato and a "Mammoth" jalapeño.  The tomato is determinate, which of course means they grow to a certain height and stop, which is good for container gardening.  The jalapeño produces the larger size peppers like you find in stores.

This will be an experiment but at least we can have something growing.  If we have to, we can use these for some Fall veggies too.  It's kind of addicting, I'll have to admit, Or maybe I've just missed "playing in the dirt"!

Let this new adventure begin!

DAYDREAMING ABOUT PLANT THINGS

 Recently, I've started subscribing to seed and plant catalogs and having them sent to the farm address.  That way, we can start getting regular mail out there and it'll be nice to get something fun out of the mailbox on a regular basis instead of tax bills, insurance and offers to buy our house/land, ha.

 I enjoy a glass of wine or in this case, some wonderful hot tea, and a quiet night or two of perusing through the pages of a catalog.  They are so fun and give us hope for the future.  In the end, isn't that what all planting is about?  Hope for the future?  We stick the seeds/plants in the soil and we hope we get to enjoy the end result of our hard work?

Six catalogs came.  I would have subscribed to just as many more but those companies are website only, no paper catalogs.  It's amazing how many no longer offer print catalogs.  I'm still old school and enjoy a physical copy in my hands, one that I can dog ear or highlight or circle the heck out of on the inside.

Anyone have any good gardening catalog ideas?  Tools, plants, seeds, general gardening, it's all good.  We don't mind on getting on some mailing lists like that, ha.

Because isn't daydreaming half the fun?

OUR HOMEMADE GARDEN GUIDE

We're old school.  We both still like paper.  Sure we have tablets and smartphones and laptops but in the end, just like reading an actual, physical book, we like to have paper.

Over the last couple of years, I've been collecting information and printing it out. Recently, I found a binder, got some plastic sleeves and put it all together.

One part for the fruit trees and bushes and one part for the veggie garden area.

Here is the fruit side/half.  I made a quick cover sheet for that side of the binder.

When you open it, for the first page, I created a graphical representation of the actual layout of our orchard area with each tree/bush labeled for the bed that it is in.  I even have the correct shape to make sure we remember what is what.

Then, in alphabetical order, are pages of info on each fruit that we are growing.  They are sourced to be articles put out by local arborists and experts (including Texas A&M University) so that it is unique to our growing climate.  We have found info on every single thing we are growing.  Apples, bananas, blueberries, cherries, grapes, pears, plums, etc.

The info is how to plant and when to fertilize, how to care for them in different types of weather, harvesting, pruning, etc, all for each plant we have in the ground.

Then, if you hold it in front of you and just flip it over, top to bottom, the back half (which is upside down from the front half, ha) is the other part.

The Vegetable Garden Guide.

Opening it, the first page has a graphical layout of all the raised beds in the fenced in garden area and what we could plant each year.  This one is for Spring/Summer garden planning...

...and on the other side of that page is the one for Fall/Winter garden planning.

There are blank multiples so we can change things from year to year and rotate crops.

While we don't have pages for each planted or planned item yet (since we don't have anything growing this year) I have found great info, from our county extension office, local urban harvest group and even some friends of the farm who live near our growing zone...they are lists of all the vegetable varieties that grow best here, when to plant them and when to harvest them, for both Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter.

And speaking of planning, I also put yearly planners in each section, month by month, to remind me what I need to do and when.

It will allow us to plan each season and keep track of what we have done, what has worked and what maybe didn't work one season.

NO GARDEN THIS SPRING OR SUMMER

You may have noticed, we have not had any garden posts this Spring.  It should be in full swing at this point in the year.

This picture is from after Summer but before Fall planting.  But then after Fall, we just let the plants in and they died/froze and we haven't tackled it yet.

Honestly, it kind of snuck up on us.  We had other projects going on and our weather this year was a lot of rainy weekends in March.  But the main reason we decided not to have one is that we should have some construction going on at some point, fingers crossed (nothing to announce just yet but we're working on it).  That will have people there with cars coming and going and just other stuff in the way.

Not having a garden will allow us time to focus on other outside projects that we've put off.  I can just go out there and mow and edge and work on clearing some spaces without having to worry about the garden, weeds, pests, harvesting, etc.  One project I've really wanted to do is work on cleaning out and organizing the workshop and shed.  We'll miss having a garden this season but we just have to remember that we'll have all the time in the world for gardening.

The goal will be to have a nice Fall garden later this year after we have some other things done.

GARDEN IN WINTER UPDATE

We might have freezing temps finally but what we do have planted is growing as it should...

The raised bed garlic is doing great and doing what it's supposed to be doing.  Hoping for some great heads of garlic in about five more months.

And then we harvested our first batch of collard greens.  They look great and other than one plant that's seemingly way behind the others, they are putting on lots of leaves.  After this harvest, we should have another batch in a week or two.

Fall gardening, small as it may be, is giving us ideas for future gardening and trying out some other crops next time.  One of our customers was telling me on the phone the other day that they were harvesting broccoli from their Houston backyard garden.  We had never even thought about growing that.  We already know that Napa cabbage works great.  So next Fall we might try some broccoli.  If you've seen our food pics, you know we love us some broccoli!  

We're back up to the 70's after dipping into the upper 20's.  'Tis the season in this part of the world.

 

FIRST HARVEST OF THE SEASON

Even though it was a washed out weekend (see yesterday's post), I was able to get out there.

BEHOLD!

Our first harvest from the garden...

Pickling cucumber and tomato

...OK, don't laugh, ha!

One pickling cucumber and one early girl tomato. We are guessing the rain put things into overdrive and a couple of them were ready.

Now what to do with them?

We could make the worlds saddest little salad, but instead we opted for using them to sample the first garden flavors of the season.

Cucumber spears

We sliced the cucumber up and then...

Cucumbers in pickle brine

...added it to the brine of some pickles we already had the refrigerator.  The brine can naturally do its thing to the freshly added cucumber.

As for the tomato...

Early Girl tomato sliced up

We sliced it up and then...

Tomato and egg toast

...put the slices on top of some homemade bread with some fresh farm eggs from 2nd Family and a sprinkling of finishing salt.  AMAZING flavor in one tomato.

It's always fun to enjoy the rewards of your efforts.

Now here's hoping for more veggies to enjoy later on throughout the season!

GETTING THE GARDEN READY

Woke up to this view from the apartment balcony on Saturday morning!

These are 40+ story buildings.  It was VERY foggy.  2nd Man had to work (from home of course) this weekend.  He was worried about me driving in the fog out near the farm (lots of curvy two lane roads) so I waited for it to burn off and then headed out.  My goal this weekend was to get started on the garden beds.  If we don't plant a Fall garden, I take a break in the Fall/Winter (i.e. neglect them, ha) until closer to Spring.

Our long range weather forecast basically says Winter is over.  We might have a cold snap in mid February but for all intents and purposes, they said we could pack up the parkas and put away the firewood, ha.

Here is an example.  I let the grass that grows in the off season go through a freeze or two so that it will die off and it'll be easier to pull up.  It's a bit messy (and looks worse) but it works well.

It takes work but I use a hard rake to help pull up the grass pretty easily.  Then the hard rake lets me break up the soil and move it around as well.

I got them done and pulled up the vegetable cages that I had left in, oops (told you I took a break from the garden ha).  I also removed all the soaker hoses (I dispose of those, the year of sun and heat breaks them down and they end up leaking if we try to reuse them).  Lastly, I take all the connectors off, clean them and get them ready for this season.

The unused beds get a new covering stapled to them if they need it.

I got all the beds done EXCEPT this one.  Well I did get this one "mostly" done, but then it started raining.  I'll leave it like this until next weekend, no big deal.

Can't really see the rain in this picture but it was pretty steady.  It's also bleak and dreary so I decided to call it a day.  It was about 4:30pm.  Since I got there at 9:30, that's a 7 hour workday, not too bad.

The next steps will be to get some bags of soil/compost to mix up and top off the beds.  I might do that closer to the time I plant just so I don't have to fight weeds/grass sprouting up.

With an earlier than usual ending to Winter, we're thinking we might start our plants earlier than usual.  I think that's where we've run into trouble in recent years.  We were late starting and while they take off and do great, by the time the veggies start developing, it's getting to be the HOT time of year.  We might get our tomato transplants in toward the end of February.  Last year it was April when we got stuff in the ground and it was mostly a bust.

It's only the end of January but blink and it'll be end of February.  I better make sure we are ready.

STARTED THE GARDEN

Well here is the update from last weekend.  That Saturday was a washout with lots of rain so Sunday it was.  It stayed overcast but was cooler and a breeze.

On the way out, I stopped at the store and got some veggies, at least what worked for what we wanted and what they had in stock.  The mom and pop nurseries are closed due to the pandemic so we had to go to big box stores.  At least we could get some things in the ground.  

Here is the sky and grass.  The grass was growing slowly so I was OK with that.  Yesterday's update, you'll be able to see that I finally mowed.

I planted one yellow squash.  The last time we tried this I planted a yellow squash AND a zucchini in the same bed and it did not work.  They were both too big.  So this year we'll just let one plant take over the whole bed.  We opted not to have a zucchini this time around and since we LOVE yellow squash we figured that would work fine.  Hope to try some delicious squash casserole in a couple months.

In this bed we planted three bell peppers.  Green, red and yellow.  2nd Man wants to try some stuffed bell peppers with the green and of course he LOVES to cook with red and yellow chopped up peppers in many other dishes.

We used the bigger bed for tomatoes.  We're going to try them again but with different varieties.  The celebrity is of course one of the most popular tomatoes grown and does well in our area...the big beef is supposed to well suited to our humid and hot summers and is prolific...and the rutgers is an heirloom that does well here and is known for it's great 'canning' tomatoes.  

You can see will still have room for a 4th variety.  Not sure what we will get, the two big box stores had some more varieties available but these three were the ones I knew could work in our area.  That was part of the plan this past Saturday, find another (and some more veggies) but the choices were slim.

And here is officially the world's loneliest herb garden, ha.  I found exactly ONE basil plant.  For some reason, our basil (in this bed always) grows like crazy and it will eventually fill up most of the center of this spot.  The stores were completely out of most herbs.  Oh sure they had rosemary (don't need), lavender (would like to have but that would have to go elsewhere), cilantro (doesn't last long in our heat) and a ton of mints (we already have some of that and don't want it taking over this bed).  This coming weekend I'll try a couple of other places and see what we can get.  2nd Man really wants some thyme and oregano.  Maybe a couple of those at each corner and that will be it for the herbs this Spring.

On Saturday they had all been in the ground for a week and are doing great even though I don't have the watering system set up yet.  That's on the plan for this coming weekend.  I water them deeply when I'm there and then we've had cool weather with a couple of rainy days during the week so it's been fine so far.  Our backup plan is 2nd Family who will come up and water for us if we asked.

HOPING TO START THE GARDEN TODAY

Well this was the post for yesterday morning but then it rained.  So today we are clear (and much cooler).  It's a bit foggy but that will burn off.  So we'll see how much I can get done today.

Today is the first day physically out of the apartment since Tuesday and it's the first time in the car since last weekend when I went to the farm.  

Yesterday a front moved through and we had steady rain which we needed but of course I couldn't go to the farm then.  I cut the grass shorter than usual last weekend so I'm hoping I won't have to mow today since it is probably too wet anyway.

The goal is to get the garden started.  It's a little later than usual but these are indeed unusual times.

This is the garden area a few weeks ago...

We're not sure we'll plant in all of them today but the big bed will have some tomatoes for sure, another one will have basil (we love basil) and maybe a couple other herbs and then some peppers in another and yellow squash in one.  Then we'll plan the others for next weekend.

I got the bags of soil last weekend so this weekend I just need to stop and pick up a few vegetable plants.  Then I can spend the day getting everything planted and the automated watering system set up.

Ah, remember the good old days of thinking about the promise of Spring without a pandemic raging across the world?  Those were the days!

What a world.

Stay safe.

WHAT VEGETABLES WOULD YOU RECOMMEND

Sorry for our absence from the blog the last few days.  We've been getting things together and staying pretty much isolated.  I purposely mowed short last weekend for this reason, had a feeling that other things would be occupying our time.  We're guessing a lockdown for Houston, if not all of Texas, is coming any day now and we wouldn't be surprised if the entire country is locked down very soon.

What a world huh?

If you had said last year that we'd be living in a time of a pandemic this Spring, most people would have thought you were crazy...but it's here and it's the new reality for most of us.  

These are indeed crazy and scary times.  

When we got the farm 8 years ago we had always figured it could be our bug out location if we had to leave Houston for any reason.  Alas, now that an actual situation exists, we can't work from home out there as there is no reliable internet connection, we only have the one window unit, not much hot water and the bathroom doesn't always work.  We had delayed improvements on the house while we decided what to focus on elsewhere for getting something new out there.  How that changes in an instant!  Now we have to worry about jobs and where the economy will be headed in the future, a recession, a depression or it bounces back?  

It's peace of mind that at last we have a place we could live in with just a few upgrades if we had to.  In the meantime, we are going to use it as our supplemental food source.

Which brings us to the question:

What to grow?  This is the garden area a few weeks back.  A few more weeds now but with a few bags of soil added, it'll be ready for planting.  We also have the new soaker hoses and parts for the irrigation system so we're ready to go with planting very soon.

The original garden thinking for this season was just a few plants to ease back into it after taking last year off.  But we're concerned about supply chain issues with grocery stores if this pandemic gets worse or lasts for months.

What veggies/herbs would be on an emergency food supply garden list for you?  Now that we are past Winter we can grow anything that does well in Spring weather.  It does turn very hot by end of May and into June.  What would you recommend growing to keep an ongoing supply of food if you could only have a few?  We're going to do tomatoes for sauce and other dishes (even though they have been hit and miss), maybe some pickling cucumbers to make pickles,  but we're trying to figure out what else.  Eggplant perhaps?  Maybe squash?  That was kind of iffy a couple seasons ago.  Peppers could be grown but they seem more like something to add to other dishes, not a main dish themselves.  Not sure about root vegetable but we might try carrots again.  Until it gets really hot some salad greens perhaps?  If we can only pick one herb probably basil for it's many uses and we already have rosemary growing.  

We're hoping that even if we're locked down we can still drive out there.  I mean it would be a trip for food and we wouldn't be stopping anywhere else.

So any suggestions on what must have vegetables to grow in a limited space that will help keep you fed?