First Update of the 2015 Season!

It’s been a hectic month or so, which is why I’ve been away from Captive Roots for a bit, but now that the garden is up and running look for a lot of updates in the coming months!

broccoli!

May was an adventure. We had two nights that dipped into the mid to low 30’s, which meant protecting plants from possible frost. There are two main ways to do this: cover them or bring them inside. One advantage of container gardening is that you can simply bring plants into a garage, living room, or other protected space overnight. Of course, you could always simply cover crops with bed sheets, empty pots, cardboard boxes, or plastic sheeting if moving them is not possible or feasible. The key thing is to keep the frost from touch the leaves. They will still be cold (plants aren’t warm blooded!) but it’s the surface freezing that ruptures their cells walls and destroys plant tissue. To be safe, we just brought our entire garden inside for the evening both times.

a plant slumber party!

Luckily, after a bout of cold nights it warmed right up, and things have been taking off in the garden! The peppers and tomatoes are really rolling, and the Golden Sunray tomato plant already has a couple of small tomatoes! We have already harvested collard greens and a bunch of herbs, and the kale is ready for its first harvest as is the orange and red Swiss chard. Here are some photos from the garden taken the last week of May.

Vates collards

daddy mix petunia

 

orange and red chard

In the coming months I will be updating the blog a few times a week. Sometimes it will be a quick photo update, sometimes a more involved post. This weekend will feature a list of garden crops for the 2015 garden and a quick post about why planting tomatoes and peppers deep is always the best strategy.

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Until next time, happy gardening