I haven’t done a gardening post in a while, so I’m going to fill that gap by telling you about my moveable plants. Okay, they’re not literally getting up and walking around. However, due to space and time constraints- we’re probably moving again in a year, destination unknown- I’m almost entirely a container gardener this year.
Gardening in this house is… an interesting challenge. It’s a row house, so one side gets morning sun and the other gets afternoon sun. There’s no place that gets sun all day, but on the plus side, there’s no place that never gets direct sun. I have the choice of putting plants on the second-floor deck, where there’s a little more light but it’s much more difficult to water everything, or on the ground-floor patio, where it’s shadier but closer to the spigot. I’ve compromised by putting water-hungry plants like tomatoes on the patio, and keeping the rosemary on the deck. And honestly, we’ve had so much rain that I probably could get away with moving some more pots up onto the deck and topping them off on the rare dry days.
Container gardening has its benefits. As mentioned above, if a plant isn’t getting enough sun or water, I can move it to a more convenient spot. It’s also easier to pull weeds and monitor for pests.
On the other hand, container plants need more water than in-ground ones, because water evaporates from the top and sides of the container, not only the top. And the mere fact that I’m having to curate my garden so tightly is a bit of a downer; I like big, sprawling food gardens, especially when fresh fruits and vegetables are so expensive.
But I have tiny cherry tomatoes starting to form, the rocket came up perfectly, the carrots are sprouting, and I have more herbs than I know what to do with. The beans need to be staked, which is going to be interesting, given that they’re in a wooden box. The cucumbers had a bit of a rough start but seem to have recovered and are starting to vine. The only real failure has been the scallions, and I just re-sowed those, so hopefully they’ll take, this time. Later in the summer- maybe early August- I’ll start some lettuce and celery; they’ll be ready to go outside right around the time the weather starts cooling off.
How does your garden grow?
Mad Genius Club 
4 responses to “The Mobile Garden”
We grew a bean. We’re hoping for a few more by fall, but it’s Upper Michigan and our soil is rocky fill from a mine, so we’re not hoping for too much.
That said, our lilac transplants seem to have taken root, as well as the poplar seedling transplant. We’re going to attempt a more robust vegetable garden next year.
Had heavy spring rains delay planting, then got hit by a hot drought. Was lucky to get a bag of snow peas and sugar snap peas. I may get a few more snow peas, but the sugar snap peas are dead. I need to clean out the sugar snap pea side of the bed, but by the time the soil dries enough to work, we’ll probably have gotten our last snow peas.
The beans and squash are still too young to flower. The peppers and tomatoes I started indoors aren’t taking well, so I think this will be the last year I try to start stuff indoors.
I’m hoping to get a fall crop of snow peas and sugar snap peas in. Right now I’ll take pretty much whatever harvest I can get.
Ferocious Attack Rose continues to bloom when it feels like it. I usually just water it and deadhead it this time of year, but this summer I got ambitious and clipped off a bunch of branches that seemed to be suffering from mold, and the rest of the plant seems to be better for it. Little Orphan Tomato Plant was a gift from a relative who’d ended up long on tomato plants; it is at the stage of tantalizing me with little green tomatoes that show no signs of changing colors, but if it acts like the family member’s tomato plants, it will bombard me with enough orangey tomatoes later to keep me busy picking and eating.
Some plants have needed a campaign against them to keep them from taking over the known universe. Some still need to spread to fill in the spot where they are planted.
Rain’s been uneven. It shows. Watering never brings the same growth.