The New Year brings seed catalogs and seed catalogs bring daydreams of warmer weather and the growing season. While summer garden planning is important and fun, there is still a bit going on in the winter garden. And the start of the year is a good time for reflection. So, before I jump ahead to spring, thoughts about worked (this post) and didn't work this summer, and what is happening right now.
The big summer project was to take advantage of the sun in our south facing, but itty-bitty narrow side yard. This area has all sorts of constraints. Since it is right next to our 1920s house I was worried about lead paint in the soil, and I was worried watering regularly right up against the house and problems moisture could create. While this side is south facing, it is narrow. Sun here is no problem at the height of summer, but as we move towards spring and fall, shade becomes an issue. Our solution - to collect large plastic containers and elevate them. We picked up a bunch of free concrete chunks that were listed on craigslist, and collected plastic tubs from the thrift store.
It took a lot of potting soil to fill those containers, and we already had a lot of compost on hand. So we made our own potting soil out of compost, coir, and perlite.
We were able to take full advantage of the particularly warm and sunny summer here in western Washington with this set-up and successfully grow tomatoes (hit or miss in any given year - this was by far our best summer ever), eggplant, and bell peppers. We also enjoyed looking out our windows of our house and into our beautiful tomato plants.
nice! proof that you don't need a lot of space to grow your own vegetables.
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