Posted on by Grubbycup

Garden update for March

The radishes planted February 15th are starting to become ready for harvest. They took a couple weeks longer than the estimate on the packages, but the weather has been cool and rainy.

French Breakfast and Purple Plum radishes

It has been a joy to harvest a few each day, although so far none have made it to the refrigerator. I’ve just been pulling them out as they are ready, washing and cleaning them, and then eating them right away. I am planning on planting more of the Purple Plum radishes again. They are crisp and pretty with just a little bite. The French Breakfast radishes are nice too, and I may grow them again, but they would be my second choice to the Purple Plums if I had to pick one or the other.

So far I’ve been enjoying the root pouches that I’ve been using as raised beds. I don’t bend over as well as I used to, so they really save my back. In the above I have radishes, a couple tomato plants, a pepper, and some carrots in the middle. The plan is to put in a luffa at the top once it warms up a little.

Radishes, tomatoes, and carrots.
Squash Seedlings and Pepper in center

Having fresh summer squash was so nice last year I decided to grow more for this year. In this root pouch there are yellow, zucchini, and zephyr summer squashes, a butternut winter squash, and a lone pepper in the center.

Dixondale onions in a 65 gal. root pouch

The onions seem to be doing well. These I bought from Dixondale farms are bigger now than they were when I received them. They may be a little too close together, but I anticipate picking some of them early for immediate eating. These are Super Star, Red Candy Apple, and Candy onions.

Stockton Red Onion

This Stockton Red Onion is the largest in the garden. It will be interesting to see how it does over the next month or two.

Sunflower

These Mammoth Sunflowers are along my North side fence-line. I haven’t grown them in years and they are a little closer together than they should be, but hoping they give me a little more privacy on that side once they get taller.

Posted on by Grubbycup

Root Pouch Container Garden Setup

I took advantage of the three day weekend to set up some 65 gallon root pouch fabric pots to use as raised gardening containers. The trellis is good and sturdy for this year, I’m not sure exactly what it was before, but it is a trellis now.

For a growing medium, I am using a mixture of coco coir (rehydrated from bricks), peat moss, vermiculite (not a huge fan, but had a bag so used it), perlite, chicken compost, and steer compost.

Proper spring planting isn’t for another month or so. Because I know I’ll get impatient waiting, I planted 30 day radish seeds. Not only did I use a mixture of radish seeds from this year, but I threw in some older seeds that are definitely past their prime just to see if they’ll sprout (and to get them out of my seed box). If they all sprout then I’ll have much thinning to do. We will see if that keeps me occupied enough to stop me from planting other things too early. On the other hand, I do have more tomato starts going than I need, so I may wind up risking a couple since the winter has been so mild.

The first two have decorative rings with carrots planted in the middle. For some variety (and fun) this round I’m trying Burpee’s Kaleidoscope Mix which has a mixture of Atomic Red, Bambino, Cosmic Purple, Lunar White and Solar Yellow carrots.

There are a few cabbages hanging in, but they got pretty beat up by insects earlier in the year. Fingers crossed, it looks like I’ll get enough from the Romanesco (fractal broccoli) to at least try it.

The Stockton red onions and the Dixondale Farms starts seem to be doing fine. The starts are showing new growth, and I have an entire 65 gallon root pouch devoted to them.