Been working on compost. Took a while to learn how to do it, but I think I’ll need to take up worm composting for a small apartment.

That way I can keep the real compost outdoors, because it does tend to attract fruit flies. 6 months ago

Well, I attempted this. I had a garden going quite well for a while, and then some nice stranger decided to burn down the house. As I wasn’t living there for a year and a half, the garden got a bit neglected. Somehow it still managed to produce some tomatoes that year!

Now I’ve settled for an indoor garden in my rental house. Not so much a garden as some potted plants that are unlikely to every produce fruit. I have an avacado tree growing quite nicely, some peppers, and a pineapple growing at the moment. 7 months ago

Currently I have herbs in pots (basil, sage, thyme, oregano), some organic tomato seedlings, and some organic squash sprouts. 7 months ago

Well I’ve had some success and some failure with this. So far the most successful thing in my garden is the bok choy. I have several heads that look like they may be ready to pull. The onions look great. And a few heads of lettuce and spinach turned out okay. The two plants I was looking forward to the most, the peppers and tomatoes, are healthy but aren’t really growing very well. They sprouted right away, and then did nothing. Just recently they have begun to grow some more, though. They have probably just been waiting for summer to actually show up.

I planted two zucchinis with enough room to let them crawl up a trellis, but have found out that they are not the vine type of plant. They are HUGE. I had to transplant the larger one to a separate pot because it was invading the other plants.

And my potatoes… They were doing fantastic all spring. I was using a stacking planter filled with hay to give the vines ample volume to produce roots. Then one nice sunny day a few weeks ago, it died. I saw it in the morning, looking great. Then checked later that afternoon and every leave had completely wilted. The sun scorched my potatoes within a matter of hours and in never recovered. So sad.

Oh, and my grapes! They have already begun producing fruit. This may be the year I get some edible grapes! I’ll have to post some pictures soon. 9 months ago

love growing plants from seeds. have an egg carton lined up with hollyhocks, a zucchini, carrots and arugula… 10 months ago

Many of my seedlings are ready to be transplanted outdoors now. Last weekend I built my planter box and bought all the soil to fill it. If the weather holds I should be able to finish everything this weekend. I’ve even got a framework built and some plastic sheeting to create a greenhouse while the plants are still young. This will also help keep weeds and pests at bay. I’ve recently turned the tide in the war against dandelions, but they’re still a threat.

Something else I started was my potato planter. I heard the idea of growing potatoes above ground in planters filled with straw. As the plant grows you build up the planter and continue filling it with straw. I’m really excited to try this. I’m doing two – russet and red. I had a bunch of plywood left over from my deck last year so I figured why not put it to good use.

Earlier this year I cut my grapevine WAY back in an effort to train it to yield some proper fruit this year. Although I was afraid I had cut it so far back that I killed it, I noticed that some of the cut ends are starting to drip water. So it’s still alive! I may actually get edible grapes this year!

In addition to just vegetables and fruit, I’ve got some red and blue Morning Glory vines started. I’m going to pot them on the deck. I’ve got naturally growing white Morning Glory in my yard so it should look very nice. 13 months ago

I bought a book on gardening the other day. Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening. Although much of the book seems to be written for people who would be afraid to put on a pair of shoes without being told how to do so, it does have some insightful information. It looks like I’m definitely going to start with at least a 16 square foot box this year. It’s still too early to start planting, but I’ve already started by collecting waste to compost. I’m looking forward to building a compost bin soon. Is that weird? It seems like an odd thing to say. Anyway, hurry up springtime so I can get planting! 16 months ago