My Container Vegetable Garden: A Mid-Summer Update

I planted my container vegetable garden in late April, and now that we’re halfway into July, it’s starting—slowly—to bear fruit, er, vegetables. But the process has not been without its disappointments.

For instance, I started off with a container each planted with lettuce, green bean, carrot, spinach and cucumber seeds. (Here's a glimpse at how they were each doing after one month.)

From the very beginning it was clear that the spinach was not a team-player. The others were sprouting up and unfurling their leaves while the spinach, soon nicknamed Mr. Grumps, came up with his arms folded, bent on not sharing any of his foliage. I managed to get a couple of good leaves off him before he completely gave up and the stems turned spindly and useless.

I decided I wasn’t cut out for spinach gardening and instead started that container over with some pepper seeds, which seem to be doing pretty well so far, as you can see in this photo of the new kids on the block:



The lettuce was growing like gang-busters at first, and we got about five tasty, homegrown salads out of the pot. Then a series of huge storms (including hail) came through and crushed all the remaining lettuce leaves. (Fortunately, I’d recently gone through and cut off most of the bigger leaves, so the destruction didn’t do as much damage as it could have.) I thought they’d bounce back, but after a couple of weeks, it was apparent they wouldn’t. I planted some new seeds, which did shoot up…only to be devoured by some unknown herbivore, which you can kind of see in the photo below. (The lettuce remnants are the purple-ish stalks, all the leaves were chewed away.) Maybe I'm not cut out for lettuce gardening either?



But things weren’t all gloom-and-doom.

The beans got off to a great start, growing and flowering quite quickly. I’ve managed to get a couple handfuls of beans off the bush and throw into stirfries. I read online that you shouldn’t let the beans “split” while they’re still on the plant, so the only ones that are left on here right now are tiny ones like these:



Because this plant did so well, I decided to plant another set of bean seeds:



The cucumbers are another source of delight. They have grown full and bushy, sprouting pretty yellow flowers that are just now starting to morph into what will hopefully become full-grown cucumbers:



Isn’t it such a neat process to watch?!

The last of the plants is the baby carrots. They’ve got lots of greenery springing from the ground, but I’m not quite sure how they carrots themselves are growing, since they're (ya know) hidden undergound. From what I’ve read, you know they’re ready to harvest when you can see the orange tops of the carrots pushing through the dirt. No sign of those yet, but my fingers are crossed.



How's your garden growing?

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How My Garden is Growing After A Month
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7 comments:

  1. This is awesome that you have a little garden like this! :) Love it!

    We also have a little garden, where we have cucumbers, beans, lettuce, carrots, strawberries, potatos and things like these. I think it's so beautiful to see how the plants are growing. And the best part is, when you can finally pick some vegetabls and fruits, so that you know that your hard work was worth it! It's great!

    I hope you have a lovely day!
    God bless you!
    Nina <3

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  2. Considering that I recently killed ANOTHER! houseplant, I don't feel confident attempting vegetables. Looks like you're having a decent harvest though! Congrats.

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  3. @ Nina - That's great that you have so much growing in your garden! I'm especially impressed with the potatoes and strawberries! I hope you get a great harvest out of them all :)

    @ PJ - I have killed my fair share of houseplants, too. I think I'm actually better at keeping outdoor plants like these alive than indoor ones. Maybe it's because nature does most of the hard work instead of me ;)

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  4. that's so great! gardening really is so much fun. and it's such a learning experience. you kind of just have to try different things out and figure out what works as you go.

    my husband and i have grown tomatoes and herbs, but that's about the extent of it so far. we're hoping to start with more next year once we're more settled somewhere.

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  5. @ Steph - Yeah, this is the first time I've really been able to plant a real garden because we've lived in smaller apartments without any sort of yard. It is so nice to be able to experiment and see what happens!

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  6. I immensely enjoy gardening as well. This year its been all herbs and vegetables. Something kept making holes in the leaves of my bean plant, but it still managed to produce about three handfuls of beans while my lettuce, potatoes, and fennel seem to be doing wonderfully. We have very heavy-clay soils here but adding in some commercial-bought bags of soil really helps the plants. My pennyroyal and parsley are taking over the garden (almost faster than plantain).

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  7. Have you tried spinach and lettuce in the fall? Both are cool weather crops and won't do well in the summer. I have a heirloom lettuce that says it does well in heat, but haven't tried it yet. My spring-planted spinach looked good for a while, then died. It was in the greenhouse, in the southwest... then I learned about it being a cool weather crop. Maybe that will help your salads :)

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