Farmer Wannabe

As usual, early spring weather and I are going to war. All of these nice sunny days have given me the chance to get out and get my container gardens and garden boxes ready for planting. So far I have broken the handles in my hoe AND my rake and I am feeling the burn in every muscle in my body as I stretch and dig and pull to get my ‘garden’ planted.

I love to garden mainly because I have a bad habit called eating. Eating a tomato or a pepper that I grew is very satisfying and I have always had some sort of garden.

For years I lived in apartments with itty bitty patios and no yards. One of my neighbors was heavily into patio gardening and introduced me to container gardening. For a while I had huge wooden whiskey barrels from the Jack Daniels distillery. Let me tell you, I grew some pretty happy plants in those barrels. I was good at growing little salad gardens too. If it could be grown in a container, I would plant it. I also grew roses. I loved having roses that bloomed year round. I would bring them home after a while, when my rose bushes grew too large, and plant them at Moms or at my grandmothers.

When Scott and I bought our first home in 1990, it had a large back yard and some of the poorest soil I had ever encountered. We worked constantly making gardening beds in the yard. He liked black berries and grapes and I liked my flowers and salad veggies. When we moved to Bruce in 1996 I really hated to leave my flowers. I had some of the happiest, healthiest roses and Scott’s blackberries and grapes had finally started producing.

My yard now isn’t large enough for a traditional garden so Scott built me 4 x 4 garden boxes. I can sit on all four sides and reach across to weed and seed and feed. I can also make the soil any Ph I want it to be. I had one box full of strawberries for several years but the fire ants took it over last year and put a stop to those. I have since reclaimed my box and am working on getting the soil healthy again. It is going to be my compost box for this year.

Last year I tried my hand at growing tomatoes in hanging five gallon buckets. It was an experiment and it went well. Now that I have my learning curve, I am ready to plant even more hanging tomato vines. We took some five gallon plastic buckets and filled them with soil and drilled holes in the bottom and planted the tomato vines. In the top of the buckets I planted sweet basil. Then we hung the buckets on an old swing set frame. The basil does two things. It makes the tomatoes taste wonderful and it keeps away those ugly tomato horn worms. I love to cook with basil also so it’s a great herb to have around.
My tomato plants are sitting inside waiting for this cold snap to go on. I learned a long time ago not to plant my tomatoes before Easter Sunday.


I also grow potatoes in containers. The first time I tried it, I didn’t think I would get any potatoes. I had some seed potatoes and I planted them and pretty much forgot about them until just before the really hot summer weather hit. When I went and started and turning the dirt over with the pitch fork I was shocked at the potatoes that had grown. That 4 x 4 box was packed full of nice sized baking potatoes. Since I had good luck previously, I planted my seed potatoes again over the weekend. And with the quirky weather we are having, I covered my containers with plastic sheeting to keep the soil warm. Potatoes are heavy nutrient feeders so I have to make sure to keep the soil really rich in that box. In 90 days I expect to be enjoying from fine potatoes.


This year I want to have carrots and onions and bell peppers and jalapeno peppers. We learned a valuable lesson one year about peppers. We love jalapenos as well sweet banana peppers. The bees apparently loved both also and cross pollinated some of my peppers. We had some sweet banana peppers that were packing enough heat to bring tears to your eyes and then a small crop of jalapenos with no bite at all. I have never planted my hot peppers near another type of pepper since then.

Uncle Jim told me once that I had to be really angry when I planted my hot peppers or they wouldn’t be hot. I’ll have to work on a good ‘mad’ when I put those plants out this year. And with the stiffness I am feeling at the moment that is not going to be too hard to do. All I need now is a few Tylenol or Motrin, some warm weather, just a little rain and time for the fruits of my labor to end up on my table. It’ll be worth it when I get to eat that first juicy tomato sandwich with a hot pepper on the side!