growing things in stuff

Pretty excited about the prospect of new raised beds in the front yard, after what would've been a crushing defeat for my meager, first-year garden. The Landlord emailed last week, with dreams of a grass-filled yard and warnings to move my shanty town of a garden to the oh-so-shady backyard. With my last vestiges of hope I impertinently suggested the construction of permanent raised beds in front of the house to disguise the sparse ground-cover. Much to my surprise The Landlord seemed reasonably interested in my option, so now I'm just waiting for the final verdict while my poor potted produce perches precariously on patio pavers, populating the perimeter of what supposedly will become grass if I'm unlucky.

At any rate, here's a picture of the set-up prior to its relocation.

From left to right:
Savoy cabbage (pretty miserable and full of holes)
Green Comet broccoli (no head yet, fingers crossed)
5 buckets of Yukon Gold potatoes (with a variety of strawing techniques/levels)
Tennessee Cornfield beans (going strong, even after 3 transplants)
Mustard greens (might not make it any further than "baby" greens)
More broccoli
2 mystery tomatoes

The potato buckets are just left-overs from grocery store bakery's, which are nice since they're 5-gallon and food-grade, but you usually have to clean out the residual icing/glaze/etc which can be pretty greasy. I know people do potato condos with tires and wood, but I'm just cutting the bottom out of a bucket and stacking them, so we'll see how that goes.

The raised bed was built in 15 mins out of 4x4s from the crawl-space and sidewalls from salvages crates, with a sheet of plastic stapled around the bottom. Unfortunately it's empty right now, since I had to vacate the "lawn".

As it stands right now, I have no huge ambitions for this season's harvest, since almost everything was started late, moved around too much, and in cramped containers. It'll be a good learning experience though, and I'll have plenty of containers stocked up for next season.

Start your own! It's easy!