Here’s a picture of the wading pool gardens – the tomatoes have set their first fruits, I’ve been harvesting half a dozen radishes a day, the Brussels Sprouts are setting up stalks and will soon be forming heads. I’ve been harvesting pineapple sage for tea and making dessert sauces and as an accompaniment for salads and ham. The cornflowers are sending up buds, The peas have lovely runners and tendrils, the cucumber had tiny fruits, the carrots are growing nicely, the basils are up and going, the bell pepper has tiny fruits.
I will need to start watering them as we’re now entering a week or two of no rain, and I will also need to top dress the tomatoes as they require more fertilizer in containers, even if they are very large containers.
The potatoes are growing very rapidly. I’ve long since passed the adding soil stage to the straw stage. The soil anchors the potatoes and provides nutrition, the straw allows the potatoes to grow larger. I find I harvest more and bigger potatoes when I use straw on top of the soil – probably 1/4 of the bags are filled with soils and growing potato roots. All the rest is straw. When I pull the potatoes out later this year, the straw goes into compost and the soil gets refreshed and recycled for next year’s use.
Now that the cold weather has passed, I’ll be setting out my onions and garlic. Tomorrow, I get a new wading pool for them, and possibly a second one for my strawberries. Where the strawberries are now is nice, but the roly polies have found them and it’s a race to harvest strawberries before the roly polies get them. I never knew just how attracted roly polies were to fresh, ripe strawberries. I think a raised bed that has no connection the yard soil will do much to prevent another invasion of roly polies.
