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lettuceleaf
Leafing Out
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- Dec 24, 2007
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I have arthritis that can prevent my working in a conventional garden. There are just 2 of us who eat from the garden; we do not save produce.
In north central South Carolina (zone 7b-8a) sometimes have limited summer rains and watering a conventional garden would not be cost effective.
Our summer temperatures can sometimes hover close to a 100 degrees for a week or so ; even normal summer temps make working outside uncomfortable for old codgers like me.
No, the plants do not cook even in the smaller 5 gallon self watering buckets--in fact the heat seems to be beneficial, strange as that sounds.
I use containers for the above reasons; but I have discovered that I get excellent yields and surprising results.
Try as I might, in my conventional garden, I could never get sweet corn to produce. Last year I thought, "What the heck? I can't do any worse than I have been doing; wonder if corn will grow in a container?
Put together a 30 gallon storage container self waterer and planted 16 corn seeds. 14 germinated; I got 13 of the prettiest (and tastiest) ears of sweet corn from that container!! 2 tomato vines in the same size container were over 12 ft tall when I cut them down this fall!!
Here is a humorous look at my efforts, with accompanying photos of actual produce from my boxes (tomatoes) and buckets (the squash).
http://l7641.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/grandpa-would-have-laughed-and-called-us-fools/
Production does slow down due to heat but it never completely stopped for me. In general I think plants react the way they would in a well watered conventional garden.
In north central South Carolina (zone 7b-8a) sometimes have limited summer rains and watering a conventional garden would not be cost effective.
Our summer temperatures can sometimes hover close to a 100 degrees for a week or so ; even normal summer temps make working outside uncomfortable for old codgers like me.
No, the plants do not cook even in the smaller 5 gallon self watering buckets--in fact the heat seems to be beneficial, strange as that sounds.
I use containers for the above reasons; but I have discovered that I get excellent yields and surprising results.
Try as I might, in my conventional garden, I could never get sweet corn to produce. Last year I thought, "What the heck? I can't do any worse than I have been doing; wonder if corn will grow in a container?
Put together a 30 gallon storage container self waterer and planted 16 corn seeds. 14 germinated; I got 13 of the prettiest (and tastiest) ears of sweet corn from that container!! 2 tomato vines in the same size container were over 12 ft tall when I cut them down this fall!!
Here is a humorous look at my efforts, with accompanying photos of actual produce from my boxes (tomatoes) and buckets (the squash).
http://l7641.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/grandpa-would-have-laughed-and-called-us-fools/
Production does slow down due to heat but it never completely stopped for me. In general I think plants react the way they would in a well watered conventional garden.
