Tuesday, May 17, 2011

LOTB Community Container Garden Update 1

I have been wanting to post about my green children participating in the LOTB Community Container Garden project. Fern came up with the idea of selecting a small variety of plants that can be grown in containers in many climates for her readers to give a try. She figured it'd be cool for many people to be able to give input on the same plants to help each other. She also set up a forum for participants to have one central place to post about it.

So out of the five varieties chosen I am growing 3 because I already had seeds for two and I was excited to hear about the other. I already had my tomatoes and cucs picked out for the year.

Here's how my green babies were doing on April 12, about a month after sowing:
 sunflower Sunspot
This was doing so well I had already potted it in a plastic 12" pot I found somewhere

 basil Purple Petra

 garlic chives

On April 22 I planted another of the Sunspots in one of my tompots from last year with some lettuce Marvel of Four Seasons for contrast. I also tucked in a cambridge blue lobelia that had volunteered in another pot.


On April 29 I stopped by home for lunch and to my horror...

 I have no idea what happened
My best guess is it just got so hot that day it cooked :;(

At least it's two sisters have been flourishing. Here's the tompot one on May 2:


Incidentally, somehow during the month of April I managed to grow a very nice set of nails despite all my mucking about without garden gloves... They've since been broken, cracked, snagged, ragged, clipped & etc.


May 8th I was finally able to transplant the garlic chives into the Utility Rack Planter and I put a basil in with my tomato Mexico Midget.
 
Clint Eastwood is bending to greet them hehehe...

 btw, that 13" pot was $6.99 at Ikea..*hinthint*

 the tompotted sunflower and it's lettuce entourage seem happy
the fudog to the bottom right was a Goodwill find :)

  
it spends its days taunting me with the promise of flowers to come...

There is another sunflower I've left in a 1 gal pot because I can't decide another spot to put it right now. I will also probably grow some more the rest of spring through fall.

Oh, and instead of thinning the basil seedlings I managed to carefully separate them so I now have 5 more transplants. I am going to pot a couple of them and if anyone in the LA area would like the others lemme know...

So as of today the sunflowers have still not yet bloomed :( The anticipation is making me antsy :/ I'm hoping by this weekend the chives will be doing well enough I can snip some to put in a meal. I don't think I'll glean anything off the basil for a few more weeks.

And that's it, we're all caught up on my Community Container Garden :) Good luck to everyone else participating too!

5 comments:

  1. charmcity balconygardenMay 17, 2011 at 7:46 PM

    Oh, how fun! I wish I participated! I love the purple basil. I really like visiting the LOTB site too! I really like all the containers you have:)

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  2. Congrats! Looks like everything is faring pretty well and you're off to a great start!

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  3. Thanks! Yup, everyone except the unlucky sunflower :Z

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  4. Victoria de LangeMay 23, 2011 at 2:19 AM

    It's so fun to see the other LOTB community gardens. I really love the tomato pots--the red lettuce is a stunning contrast. None of my red lettuce really turned out so bold, I have a lot of green-on-green :) And the blue pots are gorgeous! The sunflower is looking really cute too.

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  5. Thanks Victoria!
    As to the lettuce, I think it's the full sun exposure. I've been growing that variety since last year and that's my reddest bunch of it ever. The others I grew in shade, mosty shade, and half shade and they all came out much more greenish. These are the first getting sun all day for more than 8 hours and they are a super dark red :)
    P.S. My sunflowers are finally open! I need to post again :)

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