Container gardening ain't bad

A baby cucumber, one of the first of the season.

We were supposed to close on our new house back in April, but when that didn't happen, I decided to give container gardening a try. That way, if and when we do get the house, we can take our garden with us. Also, we won't have to install any gardens at this property that future tenants might not want to take care of.

I bought a variety of containers and plants at both Home Depot and Costco. Containers can be very expensive, so I recommend shopping around for the best deal. If you're relatively stable but still would like to garden in containers, make your own! I plan on making some if/when we get to the new house. I'll of course keep you posted. If you are going to buy, get the biggest and most durable containers you can afford. We're pretty much broke right now, so I got some junky plastic containers at HD colored to look like terra cotta. The Costco containers are nicer. They are made of some sort of resilient plastic or very dense foam colored to look like round concrete or stone pots. I think they'll last many seasons. While the plastic containers don't have the same gravitas as real terra cotta, stone, or cast pots, they are considerably lighter (which comes in handy when you have to move them to mow the lawn or clean around them).

We have a nice sunny side yard between our driveway and an empty lot next door to us. This area is in full sun from about 8 am to 4 pm, a solid 8 hours. Parts of our front yard get more sun, but the pots wouldn't look good randomly arrayed in a corner of our front yard. Plus, they get a little more protection from the wind in the side yard, because my truck is usually parked next to them, on the north side so it doesn't block the sun.

To fill the containers, I gathered some organic material including grass clippings, leaves from last fall, and freshly pulled weeds to fill about half of the pots. I'm thinking it will break down and help to fertilize the plants over the course of the summer. Also, potting soil is darn expensive, and I didn't want to have to buy enough to fill all these pots. I then made a mixture of purchased potting soil, a soil conditioner, compost, and some cheapo topsoil and topped off all the pots. I've read that you can make your own potting soil, and hope to do so in the future, but we don't have a compost pile at this house so it's going to have to wait.

I bought almost all the plants at HD during one of their big sales. I did a mix of fast-growing seeds and potted plants, and of vegetables and herbs. We wanted to stick with the basics, since we had very limited space. Here is a rundown of all the plants we have in our containers:

• Tomato "Sweet 100"
• Tomato "Patio"
• Tomato "Early Girl"
• Red bell pepper
• Yellow bell pepper
• Jalapeno pepper
• Blueberry "Primadonna"
• Blueberry "XXXXX"
• Blueberry - mystery plant (no tag included)
• Cucumber "???" (from seed)
• Zucchini "???" (from seed)
• Summer Squash "???" (from seed)
• Sugar Snap Peas (from seed)
• Green Beans "XXXX" (from seed)
• Chives (from seed)
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Basil
• Green onions (from seed)
• Cilantro
• Sage
• Oregano
• Alyssum (flower, from seed)
• Pansies (leftover from our winter planting)
• and one stray carrot

I packed the plants into each pot. Technically speaking they are overcrowded, but I was curious about how much I could grow in each pot if I paid close attention to watering and gave them some extra fertilizer. Yes, I'm using fertilizer--these definitely would not qualify as organic. When we get our real gardens going at the next house, we'll be 100% organic, but we're just not there yet. I tried to group plants according to their needs, and by size, so that they would be complementary. Some pairings seem to be working better than others. It'll take a few seasons before I am sure whether it's the combinations that aren't working, or the container size, or what.

Here is a container-by-container rundown of our container gardens so far this year:

The first container we planted was really a replacement for the winter pansies as they died back. We started with basil (big plant on right), then added rosemary (big plant on left), and recently put in cilantro (tiny plant in the front). I also sprinkled some alyssum and some leftover beans in this pot. All plants are thriving so far. We use the basil and rosemary all the time in the kitchen. Sometimes I bring some rosemary in just for the aroma--it smells so good.

Next up are the beans and blueberries. The blueberries are the main attraction here, but the beans have really helped. When we first planted the blueberries, they got burned by the sun, so I had to move them to a part-shade area. Now the beans have grown up enough so they provide some shade, and I was able to move the pot into the sun. Soon the blueberry bushes will outgrow the beans and they'll be exposed again, but I think they'll be OK now. The blueberry tags said we would get berries the first year, but I'm not holding my breath. We plan on transplanting them into the ground whenever we get a new house.

The cucumber container is also doing well. I first planted four corners of herbs. In the left picture, flatleaf parsley is on the left and oregano on the right. In the right picture, sage is hidden on the left and dill is on the right. I sprinkled chives all throughout, and we've been cutting them regularly to thin them out. So far, though, the cucumber is the rockstar of this pot. I grew them from seeds, and unfortunately threw out the packet before recording what kind I bought. In any case, we already have four baby cucumbers, including the one you can see below:

Moving on, I crammed some zucchini, summer squash, thyme, snap peas, and alyssum into one pot. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out. I think the snap peas will be fine, and maybe half the zucchini and squash, but it's really crowded in this pot already. The thyme is fine so far, but I've had to clip back some zucchini leaves to give it more sun. The squash and zucchini are getting ready to flower, so we should have some young fruit in two weeks or so. Below, on the left you can see the snap peas reaching above the fray, while on the right you can see the thyme tucked under the squash leaves.

Next we have a series of tomato planters. We love tomatoes, and they can be so expensive in the grocery store. We did three different varieties, trying to hedge our bets. No heirlooms, but next year if we're settled, we will absolutely be growing some German Johnsons and other crazy varieties in our garden.

The sweet 100s, shown to the left, shot up like a rocket and have already produced two tomatoes, at right, just 5 weeks after planting. This has been our most successful tomato plant so far, and it looks great.

We bought the "Patio" tomato plant (above, left) because it is called "the container tomato". Sounds great. So far, it hasn't done a whole lot, and the beans I planted with it are actually taller than it. Neither the beans nor the tomato plant look that great right now, but I'll give them some time to see if they come around. "Early Girl" (above, center) was supposed to produce small-medium tomatoes within 50 days of planting. We're on 35, and so far the flowers haven't bloomed yet, so we'll see. The beans in this pot look terrible. One is almost completely dead (above, right). Maybe "Early Girl" is spending her energy killing off the beans. We'll see who wins the battle.

The pepper pot is doing quite well. We have two bell peppers and a jalapeno, along with some green onions. You can see the first baby jalapeno hiding in the onions at right. The first few bell peppers are visible below.

Finally, we have a few random pots that are holding our leftover pansies from the winter. I poked a few extra bean seeds in them as well, but I don't think th wife is going to let them stay like this much longer. Time for some summer annuals, or maybe some coneflowers or black-eyed susans (my favorites). In any case, the gardens are really just getting started, and it promises to be a productive season. I'll keep you posted.

Hanging the dartboard

No, this is not much of a DIY project, but it's all I have right now. Just getting started, you know?
I bought a dartboard at Ross the other day for $8.99. Impulse buy. But I like darts and I haven't had a real board in a while. It's not the best board in the world, of course, but it'll do for now. I wanted to hang it up in the basement in our extra living space, next to my kegerator (I'm a homebrewer too. More on that later). Beer and darts: a classic combination.

Step one was finding out how high up I needed to drill the hole. Wikipedia said the bullseye needed to be 5' 8" from the floor. On this board, it's another 10" from the bullseye to the hanger, so I needed to drill 6' 6" up. I moved the hole a little further to the left than I would have liked so that I could drill into the mortar--drilling into a solid brick is no fun. I used a 1/4 inch masonry bit and my trusty Ryobi One+ drill. My drill is at least 5 years old, and it still works like a champ. Just had to replace the original battery last year, so that's not bad. I don't know if they still build them like this, but I really like the Ryobi One+ system. You can get good deals on multi-tool kits at Home Depot, especially around Christmas.

It took a little while to drill the hole, mostly because I was standing on a bucket and couldn't get a lot of leverage. But after a few minutes I was done. I popped the blue plastic anchor into the hole, put in a 1 1/4" screw, and that was that. I measured 7' 9 1/4" + 1" (for the thickness of the board) from the wall and drew my line. Hung up the board, poured a beer, and it's time for some darts!

The case of the shattering shower doors

When we moved into our current house (which is destined to become a rental property), we gutted the bathroom and put in an all new toilet, sink, tub/shower, floor, and beadboard on the walls. We also installed glass shower doors, based on the advice of one of the books we were reading as we read about the art of being landlords. The idea is to make the bathroom as resistant to water as possible. Apparently, tenants have a habit of not using, or even installing, shower curtains. Water sprays all over the floor, causing all kinds of damage. Obviously, not good. We wanted our bathroom to be beautiful and bomb-proof. So we got the shower doors. 

We bought the cheapest doors you can get from Home Depot, for a couple of reasons. First, it was the same thickness of glass on all the doors from about $100 (which we paid) up to at least $200, if memory serves (they don't list the thicknesses on the HD website). Only the trim appeared to be different, and for a rental property, we didn't figure we needed the fanciest doors in the world. Also, we knew and trusted the brand, Sterling by Kohler. I guess that shouldn't count for much...

...because we have had two of these doors shatter in the last two months. First, I came home from work for my lunch break to a pile of glass in the bathroom. The outer door had somehow shattered in the previous 4 hours. We managed to convince ourselves that one of our cats must have freaked out, jumped up, hit the door just right, and caused it to explode into a million bits of safety glass. I shop-vaced it up, and we ran out and bought another set of shower doors. The same set. We figured it was a once in a lifetime event, and we already had the frame up, and it was only $90, and then we'd have another spare in case a tenant managed to bust out a door at some point in the future. 

It was all good until last night at about 1am. Laying in bed, unable to sleep, I heard a pop, a crash, and then a continuing tinkle of ... something. Somehow I convinced myself that the cats had managed to knock over their food bin and I was hearing little bits of food bounce down the stairs. Unfortunately, not so. I eventually got up and discovered that the inner shower door had shattered. One large chunk had fallen into the tub already, creating a pretty little pile of glass beads. The rest was slowly dropping out off the frame. All cats were previously accounted for, and the dog too, so this was truly spontaneous. Plus, it was the inner door, so a creature would have had to have been inside the tub, freaked, bounced against the glass in just the right spot, and then managed to run and curl up on the end of the bed before I got up. Not likely. 

We got up early and knocked out the rest of the glass, shop-vaced it, and installed the spare door. We'll both get to work on time. But this seems odd. I checked the frame, and the top support is perfectly plumb. I'm calling the company soon, and probably Home Depot too. We both grew up with shower doors and never had them shatter. Is this simply a case of you get what you pay for? Even so, $90 should by you more than three months of use out of a shower door before it shatters, don't you think?

What do you do with a mulberry bush?

When we first moved into our house, I knew the trees in our backyard looked funny. Once their leaves came in, a quick Google session revealed that they were prime examples of the famed mulberry bush.



Remember the song? Turns out they are real, and plentiful in our neighborhood. They also produce tons of mulberries. I hate to see anything go to waste, so when the trees were thick with berries by mid-May, I set out to determine what to do with a mulberry bush.


Mulberries aren't great for eating, because they're not that sweet. They are, however, great for jams and jellies. We don't eat much jelly, but I figured this would be a good learning experience, and if it was horrible, no big loss. I found a simple-looking recipe, which I chose primarily because it didn't require pectin. I don't have any pectin on hand.
It took a while to pick the mulberries required. I quit before I got the full quart, so I cut the recipe in half and just used the two cups I was able to reach from my ladder without getting too close to poison ivy sprouts. I'm just getting over a bout of ivy, so I played it safe.
They're good-looking berries, like slightly elongated blackberries. There were a lot of bugs in the tree, and I managed to bring a few in with me on the berries, so  I put the berries in a strainer and rinsed them off.


Next came the hardest part of the whole process: de-stemming all the berries. It was slow going, and left my fingers a matching hue of purple. Turns out mulberries have been used to make dyes. I can see how that would work out well. 

Next I had to soak the berries in a salt water solution. Not sure why that is required-- need to look it up. After another quick rinse, I just mashed up the berries with a submersible hand blender (messy!) and added the cinnamon, sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.
Then it's just a rolling boil for a few minutes (until it reaches the "jelling point", whatever that is), and dump it into a jar. I used a funnel to make it a little easier.
Technically this recipe should be canned, but I don't have a canner or any appropriate jars and lids, so I just put it in an old jar we've had sitting around and figured I'd use it before it has a chance to go bad. At least a week, right? After 24 hours in the refrigerator, the jam seemed to be the right consistency.

It's not really toast-and-jam season, but we had some biscuits left over from some recent strawberry shortcake, so I convinced my wife to put together a mulberry shortcake. It was actually quite good. The cinnamon gives the jam a slightly spicy taste, underneath all that sugar of course.
Overall, I'm calling this a success. Worth the time, probably worth making a bigger batch and then canning in a few small jars. Maybe next year.