Veggie garden mini-success!


This summer I had the most successful garden yet. It was just in containers, but the secret was the drip system. In Nevada, the entire garden can die in one day without water, and this has happened to me three years in a row now. After installing the drip system and a time, voila....veggies!! We had tomatoes that were pretty successful, and the one bell pepper plant did really well. Three corn plants did terribly, we got 3 midget ears. I guess corn is not the best container garden plant. But I can't seem to learn things like this from a book, I need to plant it, see what and how it grows, then learn from my mistakes. The zucchini did well in a huge container, but we will need much more than just one plant next year. One tiny pumpkin was all we got before the plant was spent, and a cantaloupe smaller than a tennis ball is hardly worth mentioning. But the point is........nothing died! It survived all summer long, with several days well over 100 degrees, on a hot, dark brown deck in Nevada.  

Gretchen enjoying a tomato!

Another thing we did this year was to purchase this sail shade. I can't say enough about it! We'd gone back and forth about building a pergola, the permits it would require, the concentration and time (all while having a new baby) and just decided to try this option as a temporary measure. Well.... for about $50 on Amazon, we had amazing shade all summer. I love it! We will take it down for the fall and winter, but for now it casts this pretty warm light on the deck, and reduces the temp by 10 degrees at least! Even enough for baby to enjoy the deck during the day.  


Sail shade shadow

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