I really need to do a big update, this past month has been crazy.

A summary:

1) A hurricane blew through.

2) Most of my plants survived being the garage for a few days though

3) Tomatoes didn't fare too well from the hurricane or from the ravenous caterpillars.  But I had enough to plant out, we'll see if they survive.

4) This week I added another raised bed, transplanted the sod next to the porch

5) Pepper seedlings hung out by my hydroponic garden, and REALLY liked the light.  I've put them outside now to toughen up before planting them out in the raised bed

6) Planted garlic but I don't think they've done anything.

August 20th

 It's been a little while since I updated, there's been some successes and some not so much.

Potatoes.  2 buckets rotted out.  I had hoped that I would at least have a few potatoes but there was nothing in them, even the seed potato had rotted.  I think I just didn't have enough drainage holes in the bottoms of the buckets.  The two that are left have had all their leaves eaten by 5 pesky caterpillars.  Yesterday they were fine, today it's like they've been stripped.

I've now planted some garlic in one of the buckets (after putting some more drainage in) and I think I will plant some carrots in the other one.  These two potato buckets, I have no idea if I will get any potatoes from them at this point.

I've added some drip irrigation to most of my containers and I'm going to be putting more into the bed(s) this week as I'm getting two more raised beds to add to the one I have.  

The containers are all doing well, papaya and banana have been growing like crazy in particular.

The only strawberries that survived.  Better than nothing I guess.  Hoping there will be plants on sale soon so I can add to these as the bare root thing didn't work out too well.

The rainbarrel I put in.  I don't have guttering so getting water in it from the rainfall is slow going, even in the Florida summer.

The pineapple in the back I planted in June from the top of a pinapple, the one in front I planted from a fruit yesterday.

And lastly, the tomato seeds I planted in July have done better than I expected.  So much so, even with two extra beds I'm not sure I'm going to have room for all of them, so I may be giving some away.

Yay and boo

Sister in one of the potato buckets. I'm not sure why, as they were all given the same drainage but one bucket rotted. The plant withered and fell off so I decided to empty it and see if there was anything in there but nothing.  I still have 4 that look ok though.

Saturday I went to a class run by the county and came away with a whole bunch of goodies including a 55 gallon rain barrel, a micro irrigation kit and a compost bin.   Got lots of good info too.

Look at me, baking bread, drying herbs, hydroponics, sour dough starter and attempting to make yoghurt for the first time all in one corner!

(actually I lie, there's no herbs drying in it, but there was.  I don't trust mother in laws elderly machine but I've found it works by putting the basil in it and sticking it in my incredibly hot garage rather than using the electricity)

July 27th

An update!  I keep starting updates and then get distracted, the one time I tried to do it on my phone (instead of having to transfer the photos on my phone to my computer) it crashed and lost everything I'd written.

So tomatoes.

Not good.

I think just too hot so I ended up pulling them all up.

My eggplant has gone bananas growing, but as yet no eggplants.











Peppers... some are doing good some are not.  So far harvested one lonely ripe one but there are about 4 jalepenos and 4 sweet varieties.  Again, I think it's just been too hot.









Potatoes are plodding along.  Some of the stems have got long and fallen over, I guess if I had bigger buckets they would have more growing area.  Maybe next time.





Strawberries.  Sigh.  All the effort I put into the strawberry tower and only one plant has survived so far.  I was given another plant by my mother in law and that seems to be doing ok, but not the result I was hoping for.

I now have several fruit trees going, fig, papaya, meyer lemon and key lime (in one pot), guava, the weird little oranges I keep forgetting the name of, and the pineapple stump I planted.


Lettuce is coming along.










I decided to start some heirloom tomatoes for when it cools down a bit, so they have been growing on my windowsill.

Peppers and potatoes have gone crazy the last few days.  The pepper plants have grown and I've been pruning them so they've also bushed out a bit and I have several peppers growing.  Some may be a mystery as to what they are, lessons for next time make sure I keep the labels better.  We had a big storm the other day (well, every day, but this was a particularly big one) and afterwards the potato plants grew a ton.  I got a bit over enthusiastic with covering them up though as some of them have grown at different rates, so I've had to put the soil in the buckets a bit unevenly so that the smaller ones can still get some light.

Egg plant has also got big, we have another flower but as yet no egg plant.

Basil is also growing like crazy.

Two things that aren't doing so great, the strawberries.  A couple of the plants are growing nicely, some have shown no sign of life from the bare root plants, and some have grown leaves but then I guess died or gone back to sleep.  So not sure.

Tomatoes I think I have planted at the wrong time.  I may start some seedlings as we have such a long growing season, but on the whole they've been a disappointment.  I've got some growing on the cherry bush, the only one that ripened so far split.  And the only other one that has fruit is one lonely roma.

Still thinking about how to effectively get a rain barrel going without gutters.  I have some ideas.

Garden update with photos July 6th 2017

I took some quick photos of the garden this morning, I got sunburned at the pool yesterday with the kids so I didn't want to stay out there too long

All 4 potato buckets have at least one sprout coming up now, yay!
Each bucket had 5 potatoes in so I'm hoping a few more will start sprouting, and then I just need to wait for them to grow a bit and cover them with more dirt.

 Peppers!  The plants seem to be doing well and I have a few peppers coming in.  I got all different types some sweet and some hot (I don't like hot but Andrew my oldest is a hot sauce nut so maybe he'll like them), but I might not be entirely sure which ones are which now.  Oops.

Tomatoes, really only one plant has produced anything so far.  I think it's the cherry tomato plant.   Strawberries.  There were only planted 4 days ago as bare root plants, but out of 25 I have about 7 that are showing signs of life with growth so far.

Growing some romaine lettuce from seed, these have just been hanging out in my house on the windowsill so far.

And lastly the citrus trees and pineapple.  The pineapple is just the top off a fresh pineapple I bought from the store for the kids to eat, and planted.  I don't expect to get a pineapple from it for several years but I thought it would be fun anyway.  I also have a guava tree, the one little guava on it was already there when I bought the tree.  I really have no idea what guavas should look like so I should probably research that.  And lastly my calamondin citrus tree.  I think these are supposed to be more ornamental than anything but it produces fruit that is a bit like a large kumquat apparently.  Sweet on the outside and sour on the inside.  I may make some marmalade or something from them when they are ripe, at the moment I just have a lot of very small green ones.