Our efforts at veggie growing  with the tower gardens have been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot.  Some things we’ve been able to harvest without any trouble, other things just kinda sit there and I have to figure out why.

What do our towers look like today?

We have strawberries, string beans, zucchini (yellow and green), eggplant, nasturtium, cucumber, watermelon and jalapeno peppers growing.  Oh… and I just put one cherry tomato plant in just last week.

What do we harvest?

I get periodic strawberries.  These are the only things that I have trouble with keeping away from the birds.  Rubber snakes will be installed this week.  I also suspect that this tower needs to be pushed more in to the shade and this will help my strawberry production.

I got a lot of jalapeno peppers.  BUT… this is the one thing I always get a lot of, no matter what I do.  These things will always live and produce even when I’ve ignored them, forgotten about them, etc.  They are producing just as much in the tower as they did when  I used to plant them in the ground.

Lettuce… love getting fresh lettuce off of the tower.

Zucchini:  We’ve eaten yellow zukes but have never gotten a green.  These were not being pollinated by the bees and thus, blossom end rot would result in no veggie.  I have to pollinate these myself.  The zucchini is not high maintenance compared to traditional gardening but they require the most attention of all the veggies we grow.  Between always trimming leaves due to powdery mildew and having to pretend to be a bumble bee, these guys take a smidge of work.  But only a smidge.

Green beans:  Small harvests.

Eggplant:  I expect our first harvest in about 2 weeks.

Cucumber:  I am the only household member that eats cukes.  Love them and during this pregnancy, I crave them.  I put in 2 plants about a month ago.   I feared (since they are a not too distant relative of the zukes) that I would not get many cucumbers or they’d be troublesome.  Not so.  That is them sprawled out on the patio toward the back of the photo.  I’m very close to having bazillions and bazillions of cukes.  And, proving once again that I am the world’s worst estimator, I put in 2 plants to feed just me.  That was dumb.

Watermelon:  I put the watermelon plants in the same day as the cucumbers and they just didn’t take off.  Currently they are being shaded out and I’m getting ready to give up on them.

What Am I Learning?

I’ve learned how to recognize a male flower vs. a female flower and (queue Barry White music) I’ve learned how to assist the pollination process using a little paint brush.  (Reproduction!  Reproduction…. where does the pollen go??!!!!)

I’ve learned that some plant diseases are better left untreated.  Just get rid of the infected leaves.  I went to all of this effort to not put any pesticides on things, tried all sorts of organic remedies, etc.  Yet the best cure for the powdery mildew was just to get rid of the infected leaves and to thin out the zukes so they had more air flow.  We haven’t had many other disease issues and so far, if we get a pest, I use an organic spray.

I’m getting better at rotating plants.  If you do things right, you should always have lettuce because you’re adding lettuce seedlings as other lettuce plants mature.  I mess this up and right now we have no lettuce ready to eat but next week we’ll have more lettuce that we could possibly eat.  I’m not great at timing all of this.

I’m starting to master the signs of when they need more nutrients.  They are scheduled to get nutrients every 4 weeks but last week all the plants looked a tad anemic.  “Nutrient day” wasn’t until tomorrow but I decided that due to the heat, their increased growth patterns and putting out veggies, that maybe they needed some food.  When I put the nutrients in, everything started perking up in just a day or two.

To sum up….

Overall, I’m still really glad we got the towers.  I think if you had ever garden traditionally and had success at that, these would be a piece of cake.  But since I was known as the Farmer of Death, I still had things to learn.  Many things to learn. I love having the towers, watching all the veggies develop and learning more and more about how everything works and grows.  As I learn more, the plants are healthier and our harvests are bigger.  We’re getting closer to being able to just eat veggies from the towers instead of buying veggies… I just had to go to gardening remediation classes to catch up with the rest of the world.