Our little garden has begun

Since our backyard isn’t really big enough for a full vegetable garden, this summer I am trying my hand at a container vegetable garden.Last weekend I planted roma tomatoes, eggplant, straight neck yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, arugula, butter lettuce, spinach, bok choy, snap peas, radishes, basil, sage, thyme, half of our monstrous rosemary plant from last summer, chives, and mint. I also started some sweet pepper seedlings for the first time.

Our lovely just beginning vegtable and herb garden. Last year we just had herbs and they started to take over the world a little bit. that large rosemary plant is actually only half of the huge monster we had last year. We also had about twice that much basil and mint. This summer I am trying a few new things.

I found a great book called The Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey. they have a section on succession gardening so that you can have edible items growing for most of the year. The above picture is the very beginning of one of their succession pots. This one starts with bok choy in the center, snap peas in a circle around the bok choy and pansies around edges. Then after the bok choy has grown and you have made a delicious meal with it you plant a squash plant. Once the peas have grown to their limit the squash plant takes over and you have beautiful golden yellow squash for a few weeks. then you trim away the bottom leaves of the squash plant and sow in mesculan mix.

The rest of our containers are based off of a country kitchen garden. The largest pot has roma tomatoes, arugula and butter lettuce and cucumbers. I also want to try planting a tomato plant from the bottom of a fiber hanging basket and see if that works like the topsy turvy tomato planter. Next spring I want to try strawberries fromt he bottom of a planter too!

The rest of the pots have a mixture of vegtables and herbs for the summer including eggplant and basil, basil, sage and thyme, spinach, radishes and nasturtium ( another succession planting container, this one jumps from spinach and radishes to tomatoes to kale and tulips for fall and spring)

What are you doing this summer? Are you planting mostly flowers? We did a mixture of both, and I will keep you all updated on how the container garden grows this summer.