In our new place in Arlington we decided we had to take advantage of all the sun we now get. So this year we've decided to add a bit to our previous attempts at tomatoes & basil.
With limited space to actually plant in the ground & having two huge planters ready & waiting when we moved in, we decided to dedicate one entirely to tomatoes....
All 9 plants... It's a bit of a jungle & quite hard to see through, let alone manage.
The tomatoes (still very green) are turning out all right though. Now if they would only ripen a bit we'd be in business (eating tomatoes, not actually selling them).
(No puns about a green thumb)
The basil, although full & enormous, we can't take too much credit for. Our first batch died, rotted from being too water-logged from all of our spring rain. This is round number two and has been a very healthy second go round.
The rosemary (left) and mint (right) are not enormous, but enough for some seasoned chicken or a few mojitos now & then!
We would like to try and grow lots of different kinds of veggies besides tomatoes, saw cheap broccoli & figured 'why not, can't be too hard.' However, Virginia summers are far to hot & sunny to grow grocery store caliber broccoli. It needs to be cool & moist, so they don't grow too fast vertically as you can see is our problem. Also, then the green pods start to bud & flower, leaving us with a nice broccoli bouquet, not side dish.
In the shadow of the too-tall broccoli we decided to spare some room for a few strawberries. One of the plants hasn't produced anything because they're getting drowned under the broccoli bushes, but as you can see if they can just reach the rim of the planter, then we get a decent looking strawberry. Although with all of our rain we've gotten lately, the first few off the stem were too soft & had to be eaten right away. Oh well, still a tasty treat.
Our back deck runs right into a small hill which, when we moved in, appeared to be nothing but over grown with thorny vines & weeds. However we've cleaned it up a bit and found lots of blackberries, so whatever ripens in a day & the birds don't eat before we get home (or Jill shoos them away with a spray bottle) are left for us & Harvey (who also loves berries).
As long as we don't let them drown, even our desert plants have done well. The aloe in the middle actually sprouted new little aloes that we had to re-plant (little terra cotta on the right). If it keeps up, we may have some to give away for who ever wants one.
That's all for now, on the garden, but we'll keep you posted when we've got more tomatoes than we know what to do with!
Very cool guys, thanks for sharing!
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