Gardening for Old Folks (Adaptative)

[Searsmom]

Ok, I skipped the bunch in the middle and went straight to this springs posts. Ssshhh.

Here's what gets me through winter

I've given up in ground gardening and have carrots in a pot and herbs and tomatoes in starts indoors. Planted some daffodils because they will require no more effort and was given some great ideas for old people gardening in the first bits of posts on here. We have some old concrete bricks laying around and I'm going to snarf them and set them up in the old gardening area on top of some ground cloths and see how high I can get it and what will grow!

 

[cavemanrich]

Has anybody container planted pole beans? And has anybody container planted squash and what were the results?

Here are my thoughts...
You can container plant many things. The advantage being, you can control the weeds easily. You also have the advantage of feeding/fertilizing just the container area, and not all the surrounding ground/soil. This way the weeds are on their own, and not robbing the nutrients. Watering is also great, since you water the individual area(container) and water does not escape to surrounding ground.
I container grow whatever the few eatable things that I grow. Also grow a number of large outdoor flower pots. In the garden, I only have the perennial flowers growing. That is enough work keeping those going.
As soon as the danger of frost passes for my area, I will seed some sorrel, (multiple containers) and some dill. I am thinking of a couple tomato plants as well. I like the cherry toms.
I never planted Squash, and don't really care for eating it. DW does like zucchini. I can eat it, but if its not there, I don't miss it.
I like ALL beans. Container beans should do well since you just need to give them some structure like poles, or multiple tomato cages to grow up on. Life in the vertical world.
I have NEVER successfully grown corn in my garden. Same goes for sunflower. Just to be clear,,,,,,,,, It grew fine,,,, but I never got to harvest it. My FAULT for that.

Living in the City, and having limited yard space, means I cant plant enough plants to satisfy the quantity needs of all my friends and self.

 

[microchick]

Here are my thoughts...
You can container plant many things. The advantage being, you can control the weeds easily. You also have the advantage of feeding/fertilizing just the container area, and not all the surrounding ground/soil. This way the weeds are on their own, and not robbing the nutrients. Watering is also great, since you water the individual area(container) and water does not escape to surrounding ground.
I container grow whatever the few eatable things that I grow. Also grow a number of large outdoor flower pots. In the garden, I only have the perennial flowers growing. That is enough work keeping those going.
As soon as the danger of frost passes for my area, I will seed some sorrel, (multiple containers) and some dill. I am thinking of a couple tomato plants as well. I like the cherry toms.
I never planted Squash, and don't really care for eating it. DW does like zucchini. I can eat it, but if its not there, I don't miss it.
I like ALL beans. Container beans should do well since you just need to give them some structure like poles, or multiple tomato cages to grow up on. Life in the vertical world.
I have NEVER successfully grown corn in my garden. Same goes for sunflower. Just to be clear,,,,,,,,, It grew fine,,,, but I never got to harvest it. My FAULT for that.
View attachment 1716427
Living in the City, and having limited yard space, means I cant plant enough plants to satisfy the quantity needs of all my friends and self.

I got a chuckle out of your squirrel. We live in deep rural Missouri in the middle of an Amish community. Here we call squirrels tree rats. A lot of people hunt them and eat them. For the most part, I leave them alone unless they come up to the house and raid my bird feeder or try to steal baby blue birds from the nesting boxes then they are called fertilizer, LOL. I remember being a city dweller had having tame squirrels though. Here they would probably attach themselves to your face like an Alien movie monster.

I am definitely going to try some pole beans in containers. We have cat litter buckets coming out of our ears thanks to our 5 cats. Some are destined to be nesting boxes for my bantams but there are enough that I can turn some into planters. I thought I'd plant a few hills in my garden as back up. Once they are in the ground all I have to do is keep the weeds beat back.

As for squash, we like it cut into squares and either roasted in the oven or in shish ka bobs with meat and other veggies. I always try to plant squash and the chickens love the over stock when I toss them into their run.

As for why I'm trying the container deck corn. The past two years that I grew corn in my garden it did great. Delicious....at least that is what I heard from the raccoon that helped itself to every ear. I had the last laugh though. Threw a few marshmallows in the back of my live trap and sent the little thief to raccoon heaven with a sugar buzz.

@Searsmom, how deep of a container do you use to plant your carrots in? We have a miserable Vole problem here and every year I've planted carrots, they have decimated my crop. Container growth is the only way I'm going to see a crop.

 

[Searsmom]

@Searsmom, how deep of a container do you use to plant your carrots in? We have a miserable Vole problem here and every year I've planted carrots, they have decimated my crop. Container growth is the only way I'm going to see a crop.

It's a 10" pot, maybe a foot deep, spaced 3". Doing rainbow carrots for the younguns. The plan is to do a pot every 2 weeks for succession harvests. I've weed barrier cloth under them. Not pretty, but limited bending over required.

 

[microchick]

Limited bend over good. I spent much of the afternoon on my hands and knees digging out iris that had been taken over by weeds due to my neglect, I have to admit. The past two years haven't been conductive with me doing a lot of bending or kneeling. I decided that it wasn't going to get any easier so I tackled the problem this afternoon and dug up about half the iris in question, removed the grass and replanted. I'll get the other half done hopefully tomorrow before the rain they are predicting hits.

I'm sitting here now waiting for the pain meds to kick in.

I have kitty litter buckets that I'm planning to use as containers. 5 cats means that I always have nesting boxes and garden planters around. One or two are destined to be be carrot containers as my husband loves carrots.

I think I'm pretty much going to have to buy composted cow manure for my containers, however. I've either got a fungus or a nematode problem with my soil as one of the problems I've had in the past with containers is roots rotting on my plants.The nematode problem is easily solved with the right treatments but the fungal infection is tougher as everything I've read says the only treatment is copper.

Anybody know what the effect of copper is on container plants?

 

[rjohns39]

If you can find them free or cheap, food grade 55 gallon drums cut in half make great containers, so do 5 gallon buckets. Both will need lots of holes drilled in for airflow and drainage. I continue to increase my container count. Hoping to grow enough tomatoes this year to can up a bunch. I've been out of whole and diced tomatoes for more than a year and mine are way better than what I get in the store. When it was just DW and me (me being the only corn eater) a 4'X10' raised bed with about a foot of soil produced enough corn to eat through the season and freeze a little. Figure each plant will give you 2-4 ears (avg 3). I need to get the soil tested in my former pig pen, which housed my compost pile prior to the hens discovering it. The pigs tilled it pretty good and removed all vegetative growth. Considering planting corn there. Now that I have the LGD, deer are unlikely to raid it at night.

 

[cavemanrich]

I call them also LIMB CHICKENS. That is a term that was coined by early pioneers/settlers. I of course do not eat them.. Caveman also does not kill anything. (flies, and mosquitoes not included)
I went thru 2,,, 50LB bags of BOSS this winter season. Tree rats have their own feeding stations. I keep my bird feeders (2) out of reach from them for obvious reasons. I also purchased 20 lbs. of shelled, unsalted, peanuts. They prefer sunflower over the nuts.

A tip for growing container pots. Most already know this but some novices may not.. This is how I treat this.
Make sure that containers have drainage holes. In a typical 10 inch deep container, I drilled holes about 1 inch from bottom. This allowed about 1 inch of water to be retained in pot. That water would get absorbed by soil above as it dried. Some roots would also reach well into that depth to drink that water up. This worked for me with no root rot. Other container that have holes on bottom, I just leave as is.

 

[microchick]

Yeah, I do the same thing. I drill holes around the bottom and in the bottom. As I have been having trouble with even well drained planters and house plants, I began to suspect something was going on with the soil. Our soil is very heavy with clay about 6-8 inches below the topsoil. Makes getting anything besides weeds to grow a challenge.

 

[Searsmom]

Anybody know what the effect of copper is on container plants?

As with anything else, moderation. A little bit can be good and there are some plants that need it. Too much though can stunt plants enough to make them useless. Any copper supplement should have directions. If nothing else, treat the soil and plant a cover crop for a season or two.

 

[Searsmom]

Yeah, I do the same thing. I drill holes around the bottom and in the bottom. As I have been having trouble with even well drained planters and house plants, I began to suspect something was going on with the soil. Our soil is very heavy with clay about 6-8 inches below the topsoil. Makes getting anything besides weeds to grow a challenge.

Weed growing champ here!
I realized that after I said it...garden weeds...not weed.