not so brief container gardening update
1. Tomatoes---I started everything in the garden pretty late this year, so I still haven't harvested many of the larger veggies yet. But, in the past week I have picked a handful of green grape tomatoes and one medium-sized beefsteak. Many babies on all of the plants.
2. Herbs--We've been using the rosemary, the assorted basils, oregano, and the mint for weeks now, and I really should start harvesting the lemon balm for tea and such. I seeded some cilantro a few weeks ago after I pulled out the last of the bolted arugula, and that's growing nicely.
3. Eggplant--It just completely died without bearing anything. Sigh. I will yank it out of its pot, and probably plant some of the bush bean seedlings I started two weeks ago.
4. Peppers & chiles--We have a few min chiles on one plant, and everything is flowering nicely now except the Thai chile. The buds on that are still tiny and very tightly furled. I think it's going to take a few days of "Oakland summer" (aka the handful of hot days we usually get in August and September) to get everything started.
5. Sunflowers--Tall and growing taller by the day.
6. Beans--The asparagus beans have started to send out runners, and my next task with them is to nail some chicken wire to the back fence and train the runners along that. The purple bush beans are coming along fabulously, and this morning I found a few tiny pods hanging out. These plants have been easy to grow, hardy, and I'm hoping they'll turn out tasty too.
7. Worm bin--This is actually the thing about which I am most excited, oddly enough. I picked up a handful of worms from a friend a few weeks ago and introduced them into the bin. Since that first night tucking them underneath the bedding, I've been anxiously waiting for them to reproduce and holding off on shoving too many food scraps into the bin as I didn't want to overwhelm them.
This morning, I checked the bin and noticed some definite progress. The overall population seems to have increased by at least half and they've burrowed over to the side where I dug in some of our scraps and they've already munched their way through some of them. Precious nutrient-rich castings are evident! I think I can start adding food scraps on a more regular basis now. This should help cut down on our apartment's overall garbage output and make our kitchen garbage pail and compost box less stinky.
8. Lesson learned--The particular microclimate around here just doesn't get warm enough for most chiles, tomatoes, and zucchini to truly flourish, so I think I will cut down on the number of fruit-bearing plants next year and focus more on greens, beans, and herbs. Perhaps I can try some peas as well. I will just try to grow one or two each of the tomato and chile plants next time around. My Cherokee Purple heirloom tomato and grape tomato plants seem to be doing the best out of this year's lot, so I will be saving some of those seeds.