The Lazy Farmer

Day 18...Hot, Hot, Hot!

2011-06-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a week and three days since my last update. Sorry about that...I said I would get at the very least a weekly update, but remember, I am the "Lazy" Farmer. There have been some interesting updates in the last week, not the least of which is the weather. Here in Maryland and most of the North East, we have been experiencing higher than normal temps. That's putting it mildly...it's a damn Heat Wave in Early June! Twenty degrees above normal. The last two days have reached 100 and the feels like has been as high as 115. This is nuts! The new normal...climate change is all kinds of fun.

Anyway, the heat has been having different effects on the pots. Strangely enough the plants I thought would be more susceptible to the heat, barrels containing potatoes and watermelon, have done better and the plants I thought would love it, tomatoes and peppers, have taking the biggest hit. The reason I say this is I have read other deck container gardeners attempts and they have almost always noticed that any pot that is actually on the deck, not suspending above like my window boxes, heat up too much, causing the soil to almost cook the plant's roots. Doesn't seem to be the case on my Deck. I'll show you what I mean.

First the good. Here are my Water Melon and Potatoes barrels:

Only the one potato barrel, but two pics. See...they both are doing gangbusters. I can almost taste those buttered spuds and juicy melons.

However, in the other corner, we have our Tomatoes and Peppers:

As you can see, the bottom leaves of all the plants are yellow and dead. Now, at first I thought I was either over or under-watering. So I bought a handy dandy soil moisture meter. It works great and I found out that I've been right on target with the watering...keeping the soil moist, but not to wet or to dry. NOTE: See my new Banana Pepper plant in the Terra Cotta pot? Thank you for the millions of suggestions for this pot, unfortunately I had to chose only one and that turned out to be my two year old's suggestion. She thinks it's gonna be a Banana Tree.

Last, but not least there's the Sunflower Box:

Nothing to report here other than steady growth. 10 days and at least two, maybe three inches...they love the heat.

Two final things to add. Since it has been so hot I've rigged some shade for the plants during the hottest part of the day and setup our kiddie pool on the deck. Hoping that a) the shade will keep the blazing sun from killing everything on the deck and b) so the kids can play and splash all over the deck...which provides a great water source for all the plants.

As always, Keep Farming and Keep it Lazy!

Day 8

2011-05-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

Well...it's been a whole week. Temperatures have been hot and humid, 80's and 90's, all week. Lotsa water and Lotsa sun means Lotsa growth. Remind me to try and take these pictures from a relatively standard spot for each pot/box...it would make it easier to see the growth, over time, of each plant if I were able to take these pictures from the same spot every time. If I were really professional I would have a tripod set up for each plant, and give you time lapse photography of each plant as it grows, but, HA, good luck with that. Maybe I'll outline some foot-prints on the deck where I need to stand for every shot. Anyhoo, on with the show:

Sunflowers: Amazing growth in just one week:

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Mr. Stripey, Yummy Bell and Container Tomater...all coming along nicely and starting to bud, although Mr. Stripey has some brown spots. I may have over-watered, but it appears to have recovered nicely.

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Watermelon...my two year old's Watermelon barrel is doing great:

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And Finally, Red Norland...just one week and we can see some green sprouts coming up around the edge of the whiskey barrel:

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So, everything appears to be humming along very well, with very little effort. You may notice some grasses and weeds starting to sprout in both the Watermelon and Potato Barrels, but I'll be able to pull up a chair and weed each barrel, when needed, in a few minutes. Piece of cake!

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You may have notice the minor adjustments I made to the Planter Boxes. I moved them down and out of the wind and by the looks of the growth spurts on both Tomato/Peppers and Sunflower plants I made a good choice:

Now, when the wind picks up I won't have to worry about my Sunflowers or Tomato/Peppers blowing away. Also, it has the added advantage of being able to loosely tie each plant to the deck railing/spindles...Win/Win!

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The wife didn't want me to do any more drilling or nailing into our already ravaged deck, so I came up with an ingenious little workaround:

See that? Just a piece of 1 x 1 wood that the Planter Box hanger grabs onto and squeezes against the deck spindles. Amazing?! Yeah, I know. Hard to believe I figure out that one all by myself (although, my two year old gave me the idea).

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So, that's about all for today. I'll try to keep up with the weekly updates and more if anything unusual happens. In the meantime, "You stay classy San Diego." er, I mean, Keep Farming and Keep it Lazy!

Day 2 (or 3 if you're into counting)

2011-05-24T12:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've finished with most of the planting and preparations. The girls helped me out this morning with the Sunflower Box (remember, the Invisible Gold?). I've just realized that you should be able to click on any of the uploaded pictures to bring up a bigger, More Detailed, picture...ain't that great? So, here's the future Sunflower Box:

Finger Poking Holes

...You see each of those little holes? Well, thar be a Sunflower Seed in each one. Now according to the package you're supposed to sow the seeds 1/2 in. deep, 4-8 in. apart. Well, I think we got the 1/2 in. right, but as for the spacing...not even close. Oh well...I'm not sure this is going to work out 'as is' anyhow, because these so-called "Miniature Sunflowers" can grow between 4-6 feet according to the package. Ain't no way that will happen in this little box. Which brings back to my 'teaser' from the last post. Our deck is exposed to North by North East winds...now, unless I put up some kind of wind breaker, I imagine I will come home one day, after a summer storm has blown through, to a deck filled with empty planter boxes and dirt everywhere. That, my Lazy Farmer Friends, is another story, for another day.

Oh and one more detail I should mention about these Planter Boxes, specifically the soil mixture...the planter boxes are topsoil mixed with compost as follows:

Mmmm, Compost.

Using this professional Mixing Bucket:

Had to fight my two year old for this bucket.

The rest of the pots are a mixture of garden dirt, old miracle grow soil, a little compost and weeds. Hey, can't take all the fun out of it, eh?

Right now, I'm trying to water morning and evening. I know that seems like a lot of work, seeing as how far I have to walk to get to the "Garden":

That last Planter Pot, Ed2, is at least 10 feet away!

...and how far I have to bend over to get the hose:

No, that's not a green snake.

I got some great close-ups of the other Planter Box vegetable tags...here are the three plants and what they are supposed to look like when their ready:

Mr. Stripey, don't let me down.

How can you resist a Yummy Bell?

Container Tomatoes, from the Container Region of Italy.

We'll come back later this summer and do a little compare and contrast slideshow...heh, heh, that should be good for a laugh!

Two last items for today's post:

1. Here's a good close-up of my 4th Child, that I have named, Red Norland (and he conveniently came with a name tag!)

Daddy love.

ooohhh, he's gonna taste good with a little sour cream and butter!

2. Lastly, you may have notice a visitor to our little Deck Garden Party. You can see him here sitting beside Red Norland and Ed1:

What you lookin' at Lettuce Head?

I'm not sure how he got here or if he was even invited. If he is willing to stay around I think I'll name him, Clay. As for the moment, Clay is only half full of dirt and has brought nothing to the party...he's literally a Blank Slate. So, I'm opening up my Lazy Farmer Blog to suggestions as to what exactly should be put in Clay so he can become a contributing member of our Deck Garden Family. This contest will be open to everyone and the selected winner, voted on by my judges, ages 2, 7 and 13, will win an all expenses paid trip to their own computer to open an email from me that congratulates them on winning the contest!

That's all for today. Keep farming and keep it Lazy!

Day 1 (Really Day2)

2011-05-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

May 23rd, 2011...actually, May 22nd was my official Deck Garden launch. My goal, for this 2011 Spring and Summer is to catalogue, in great detail with both pictures and video, my humble attempt to grow a very small, economical, in both price and space, garden on my deck. I'm going to do my best to provide you with regular updates on the garden's progress and document all my successes and failures in the hopes that I may be able to help just one other person avoid silly and/or costly (did I mention economical yet?) mistakes. This is my first attempt at both Blogging and small economical Deck-Top-Gardening, so please, be patient with me AND this blog as I am sure the blog will contain as many mistakes and improvements as my economica...(ok, overkill?) garden.

So, without further adieu/ado here is a picture of my garden, Day 2:

Day 1 (Well, really Day 2. Day 1 ended very late and my camera battery
was dying and it was started to cloud over and...anyway, Day 1/2)

What's that you say? That's not much of a garden? Shame on yo...well, yes, I guess you're right. The whole idea of a Deck-Top Garden is to reduce the amount of time and effort (and cost! ok, I'll stop), while, hopefully, maximizing the yield of your...ahem, crop. Don't let those ground-plot gardeners get you down...you know who I'm talking about. Those show offs with 1/2 acre plots, 12 horsepower tillers, enough weedkiller to fill a crop duster...you know the type. The ones that say..."Oh, how quaint...you have a ...plant...on your deck." or "Next year, why don't you just move the whole garden inside the house? Then you won't have to walk Five Whole Feet." Hah...nice try...I only have to walk three feet. Anyway, my plan, this year, is to start small and see how it goes. I'll have those same NNN's (Nattering Naybobs of Neg.) over in late summer, early fall and we'll see who's laughing and who's not wearing a back brace from picking weeds all day, right? am I right? right.

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BACKSTORY - Flashback - Year 2006. Gas was $.10/gallon, Movies were a buffalo nickel and you could watch moving pictures on this amazing new invention called the Television Receptor.

...........(start dream sequence...diddledidledooo, diddlediddledo, diddledoo...and we fade out from our beautiful Present Day Futuristic Economical Deck Garden to our 2006 Ground Level Garden).....

The Date, May 2nd, 2006, Captain's Log 4043B point 2..."It was a beautiful sunny day on the planet Earth, third rock from the System Terron, Galaxy Milky Way. Temperature, 72 degrees, wind moderate, beer cold. It was on this day that I took it upon myself to create what these Earthlings called "A Vegetable Garden". You can see the fruits of my labor here...

Tomatoes

Here...

Butter Beans, Peas, Carrots

Here...

Jimmy Hoffa

...and finally, here...

Dolly Parton...er, no Watermelons..er, same difference.

As you can see, a great effort was expended in created this meager 12x12 plot...and now, according to all the Earth Vegetable Gardening literature I have been able to get my hands on, all I have to do is sit back, drink my cool lemonade, hang out on my front porch swing and wait 60-80 days until my garden is ready for a bountiful harvest.

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Skip forward Three Short Weeks...

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Star Date, May 22nd, 2006, Captain's Log 4043B point 3...Dire straights...Two straight weeks of 90+ degree weather...Weeds, Growing out of control....Local children, Refusing to work, Citing strange Earth labor laws...Garden is a complete write-off...Leaving planet immediately before Weeds take over as seen here:


They Ate the Fence!

...and here...

Carrots? Onions? Peas? Miniature Redwoods?

...and, for the love of God, here...

Hmm...strange looking "Weed"s there, huh?

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BACK TO PRESENT DAY -

So, you can see now why we have moved to the Deck, right? Ok, running short on time, so I'll fill the rest of this introductory post with lovely pictures of my soon to be Rockin', Flourishing, Deck Garden! Woo Hoo!

Let me introduce you to Ed1 and Ed2. The wife used to put pretty, non-edible flowers into these two deck pots, but I convinced her to put in some edibles. She took this suggestion very literally...everything you see in Ed1 and Ed2, according to the sales lady, is edible. Except the dirt and the pot, unless you're really hungry:

Ed 1


Ed 2 (Ed2 has a little more personality, don't ya think?)

You'll never guess what's in here...That's right, Potatoes! Red Potatoes to be exact. With just plain old dirt. I'll be doing a lot of weeding in this old half whiskey barrel. This is my pet project...I just wanna get some useful spuds outta here. If this fails, I may give up this project...just kidding, but I want them Spuds!

Spud Barrel

Same barrel...we should see some Spud Sprouts in here in a week or two.

Spuds from heaven (above).

I'll need to post some more pictures of this one but this will be an interesting experiment. This is a watermelon barrel.


Juicy Dirt, er, Watermelon.

Ok, here we see one of my Planter Boxes. This particular box contains, from
left to right, Patio Tomatoes (really, that's their official name), Orange Pepper and Mr. Stripey (Orange-y, tomato with red stripes). Remember, this is all experimental and if I had to guess, none of these three will live to see June (more on that later). I'll have to get some better close-ups of these fellas.

Generic Patio Tomato Plant, Orange "George" Peppard, "Mr. Stripey, Orange and red Tomato.

The "Other" Planter box contains Invisible Gold. Ok, I wasn't able to get to this box on Day 1 / 2...but the plan is to fill it with a nice topsoil/compost mixture and plant miniature sunflower seeds. My wife thinks the girls will enjoy this, but this is another Planter whose contents may not withstand our summer. More on that later (teaser!).

Look at the magical invisible Sun Flowers!

I suppose this last picture epitomizes this blog, "The Lazy Farmer". This hose is right outside our sliding patio door and will be used to water the plants, day and night, until this Lazy Farmer installs some kind of drip irrigation system. Until then, this will have to do.

Lastly, more than anything, I want this Deck-Top Garden to be fun! My Three Girls, ages 2, 7, 13, will all chip in and help me nurture this garden to maturity. The whole family can enjoy this and we won't have to be out all day in the killer sun, picking weeds! Win, Win.

My next post should contain some more details of the whole production and some more close up pictures and, cross your fingers, the Invisible Sunflower Box should be planted! Yay!