[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Good morning Diana! Its always nice to get to the point when you can step back, water, and watch everything unfold!

Pictures from this year's garde...I have been fortunate with cool weather this year (so far...).

Front: Garlic and multiplier onions on the right, a small raised bed with carrots growing on the left. (Container soil was sifted ans screened to remove debris and rocks before planting the carrots.) Under cover....almost mature Rutabagas. (You can slice them thin and use as vegetable noodles, or mash with potatoes for au gratin, or just vegetable mash.) This shows my indeterminate tomato varieties, mortgage lifter, hillbilly, black from Tula under their fence post / blue painted conduit support. .

Rutabagas, turnips, beets in first three rows, tomatoes and peppers in the last 2 rows.

Picture of Baker Creek Hida Beni Red turnips (or, one may be a Nagasaki Aku Kabu.) Shred or sliver radishes and carrots and use as a relish in oriental dishes. (Or on your Ramen Noodles!)

Last year someone...Mom with hope or MetMom shared that she grew her potatoes in bottomless pots. This year I did this when I planted German Butterball potatoes and a few Clancy potatoes (not seed) from last year and getting good growth. ( Thank you for the suggestion!) Great looking and I hope that I did not over fertilize and can actually grow some potatoes. (Hopfully the weather stays cool for the next few weeks!

In the front of the photo under the white wire Dollar Store baskets (also someone's suggestion!) I planted some Baker Creek Caro-gold sweet potato slips, also in bottomless pots. It gets hot here so I hope they do well. I will train the vines on the fence and see what I can grow in their shade.

[MomwithHope]

Very nice garden Pete. Yes I did try potatoes in a big pot. They did Ok but they were in soil. I got advice here and this year we just put them up, straw layered with rotted leaves. I should have some pictures next week.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Looking good, Pete! :)

[metmom]

I did the bucket potatoes. Definitely keep me posted this fall on how yours do.

I got everything in fairly early. My garlic looks like your bed and I had to go out today and weed it. What a chore. Those plants are TALL.

The onions are next on the to weed list.

Mr. mm and I are still planting trees and bushes bought from the State Nursery. Most of them are doing very well, although a few look like they didn’t make it, but I figured there’d be some attrition.

I got my tomatoes in a couple weeks ago, and 6 of them are already putting out their first flowers. This is great, because normally, we don’t even get the plants in the ground until this weekend.

The asparagus is coming up and the asparagus beetles are joining the party but me and my trusty jar of soapy water are taking care of them. A couple spears seem to be particularly attractive to them for some reason and since they already have so many eggs laid on them, I’m just rubbing them off and going to leave those for the beetles to go after. We won’t be eating them anyways.

[metmom]

And the romaine is looking great.

The snow peas should be flowering soon, so hopefully in a couple weeks I can harvest them.

[FamiliarFace]

I’m so jealous, Pete! That looks like how I grew up. I know I bellyache a lot that I live in an HOA, so I can’t do these things without breaking every rule in the book. We are “semi-rural” here, and if I wanted to do that kind of gardening, I would have to go to a community garden, which, for me, defeats the purpose. So I stay within the confines and do herb gardening only. I am cheating already by having a single solitary lonely broccolini plant on my front walkway, my sunniest spot other than the middle of my front lawn.

So some please show me what bottomless pots are. I think I need to add this to my repertoire.