I took these pictures in the morning and the rear of the house faces east (which means lots of BRIGHT! early morning sun, but some of the more sun loving plants tend to suffer)
You can see the chard is thinned out a little, because I harvested a bunch, and I have plenty of pockets that I should actually put some plants in. This tower isn't as crazy as the other one partly because I put in a lot of pepper and other "non bushy" plants. But I did have to stake one of the tomatoes!
 |
 |
And here's the other one, please don't mind my awful lighting ;)
The tomatoes have really taken off on the top, and somehow a squash has gotten up there! And, AND! I've finally gotten cucumbers that are growing. For the past three years they've just slowly died off and been sad. You can see on the bottom of the picture on the right that I've given them a bit of trellis to work on. Part of that is because the community is mowed and I was worried the not-so-great-this-year yard workers would mow over it (this year's people are not nearly as good as last years, sadly).
There are also tons of squash flowers! (I hand pollinated them a couple of days ago, because we don't have any bees) and the salvia are going crazy!
 |
 |
Here's my large (for a normal garden) or small (for one containing garden towers) container that I put some tomato plants in. I gave up on ever growing large tomatoes, I seem to be terrible at it, but I threw all of my left over cherry/grape tomato plants in it, just to see what would happen. Apparently what happens is a tomato explosion. I've never had this much growth or this many tomatoes, and I certainly remember to water this over-burdened planter every day so I don't lose any!
 |
 |
And just for fun, here are a couple of things from the garden last week - one is the massive amount of swiss chard I harvested. Usually a big bunch or two is needed for the two of us to eat because it reduces down so much, but I had enough for probably 6 people! It's crazy.
The other is a surprise! (kinda) sunflower that popped up and looked so pretty on a rainy day. I hope to get more sunflowers out of that stalk and maybe I'll get to plant more next year!
 |  |
Wow great job! I'm getting the first flowers on my tomato plant right now. I have basil too but my cilantro died out so I'll have to plant more. My lavender never sprouted :(
ReplyDeleteMy lavender is likewise un-sprouty :(
DeleteI am amazed at how much you can get in each tower. I need to look into those. We have plenty of land that we could garden, but the soil is so poor, I doubt we'd have much harvest.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I got the towers - they each hold about 50 plants, plus there's the composting aspect that I love so much.
DeleteThe newer towers are really good looking, too! These were both kickstarters/prototypes, and I'm not unhappy at all with them, just super impressed with the new ones.
Great job on your gardening, it all looks awesome! I don't know how the weather is doing where you live, but over here, we ware having a ton of rain (too much for some areas that are battling floods :( ) alternating with hot sunny days, and the plant life is growing like crazy!
ReplyDeleteMy hometown keeps flooding, which is very sad, but up here, we're having a pretty "normal" if bit warm summer. I've noticed I have to water my garden towers more than normal, but the heat isn't too oppressive.
DeleteLast year or the year before most of my tower died because we were unusually cool and rainy, and it made me super sad. This year is much better, though!
Wow, that looks very lush and awesome that they're already "bearing fruit". :)
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm a bit jealous of my family further south - they're already harvesting tons of stuff, but I know I'll be there soon! :)
Delete