I’ve planted alot of herbs and vegetables this year. Part of it is in anticipation that some will die and part because it’s so easy. I research beneficial plants on the internet. If you place certain ones together they can help ward of each other bugs and diseases. The flowers are a cheap addition to help provide ground cover and reduce the loss of water from the container and cool the roots. The greenhouse is a box with the sides cut out and plastic wrap taped in. Here are the pics.
The list so far is (4/26/06):
10 patio tomatos (wow all the seeds sprouted)
1 grape tomato
3 cucumbers
1 catnip
1 sage
4 basil
1 fig
1 lavender
2 hops
3 okra
1 rosemary
Update 1 (5/25/06):
I’ve already had fruit off the grape tomato. There have been some additions, replacements, and deaths. Take a look. I’m impressed with how many tomatos have already produced and it’s still may. So, I purchased 2 more plants and I found lists of beneficial plants and planted them together. Overall, the patio should be pretty protected, it’s on the third floor, but I saw large grasshoppers up here last year.
The list so far is:
7-9 patio tomatos (some don’t seem to grow)
1 grape tomato (started bearing ~5/15/06)
2 cucumbers
1 catnip (replacement)
1 sage
4 basil (2 replacements, 1 blooming)
1 fig
1 lavender
2 hops (1 sprouted yesterday)
3 okra (1 almost dead, 1 sick, 1 healthy)
1 rosemary (unpurterbable)
2 german chamomile
1 citronella
2 goliath bush tomato (1 small pot, 1 half buried large pot)
1 ground cover peppermint\
1 sorrel
4 sweet marjoram (we’ll see who lives after the first wind storm)
1 snapdragon
Update 2 (6/25/2006):
My patio garden has been hit the past 3 weeks (that I was aware of) with some kind of infection agent either bacteria or fungus. It started on the big tomato plant and has progressed to everything except the sage, rosemary, basil, mesquito plant, mint, and fig. More root space seems to help the plant fight it off. It starts at the leaf ends. They brown and curl. As time goes on the curl becomes more pronounced and the stem is affected. New leaves don’t grow and may be defomed. Aphids seems to spread the problem. I’m treating the aphids by removing the bottoms of the self watering containers and spraying many times a day with soap and I have hung flypaper.
The disease is much more of a concern. I’m treating with a mixture of 1 qt water to 1 tsp baking soda, .5 tsp sesame oil, .5 tsp peanut oil, 3-4 drops regular dish soap. Some mishaps with neem concentrate removed all growth regions from the okra and stained the basil and snapdragon. The sage was completely unaffected by neem.
The fly traps pointed out how much dirt is blown out of the containers. So, I got some Impatiens and what was labeled a Sedum for ground cover. I’ve learned many things about ground cover. I hope to used the marjoram and/or peppermint as grass when I have a yard. Both are tough, stay low (now mowing), aggressive, and smell nice. The sedum joins this experiment. I think a melon or squash would be good in a garden as living mulch to cover the dirt of taller peppers, okra, tomatoes and such.
The list so far is:
~7 patio tomatos (too thick to know)
1 grape tomato (dying slowly)
2 cucumbers (fruit dies from leaf disease)
1 sage
4 basil (2 replacements, 4 blooming)
1 fig
1 lavender
2 hops (1 won’t grow and 1 is 4 ft on a trellis)
3 okra (all struggling)
1 rosemary (unpurterbable!)
2 german chamomile (leaf tips brown, they try to grow fast)
1 citronella
2 goliath bush tomato (1 small pot, 1 half buried large pot)
1 ground cover peppermint(growing quickly)
1 sorrel (struggling)
4 sweet marjoram (competes with peppermint, I’m amazed)
1 snapdragon (flowing again)
1 common ginger
1 potato
1 box of onions
6 Impatiens
2 sedums?
Update 3 (7/23/2006):
There’s been a lot of change the past few months. Two of the tomatoes, patio and goliath, have doubled in size and seem to be outgrowing the disease. The original plant to catch the disease is on it’s last legs, but still blooming and trying. The okra, which I thought was dead, must have had enough roots and has come back double the orignal size. The sorrel is barely making it. The citronella up and died in a two weeks. I have no idea why. The potato is almost dead in a week.
Some interesting notes. The aphids are impossible to wipe out. You can use gallons of soap, but that’s expensive. Fly paper works great, is very cheap, and bothers nothing. The disease seems to be controlled by the baking soda recipe on this site, using half peanut and half sesame as the oils. Be careful it will melt the petunias and severely hurt the okra. Most things seem unaffected. Perhaps the best thing I did was bring home a buck of half sand and half manure. That’s caused the tomatoes to get very big and slowed their disease quite a bit. The marjoram has been decimated, but the mint is unperterbable. The lettuce in the lettuce box doubled in size in a week. It looks very promising. When the weather is hot, water in the catch tray will actually be drawn up into the soil even though they are not in contact.
The list so far is:
~7 patio tomatos (too thick to know)
1 grape tomato (almost dead)
1 cucumbers (fruit dies from leaf disease)
1 sage(2-3 times bigger)
4 basil (2 replacements, 4 blooming)
1 fig(growing finally)
1 lavender
2 hops (1 won’t grow and 1 is up the trellis)
2 okra (doing well)
1 rosemary (unpurterbable!)
2 german chamomile (struggling)
2 goliath bush tomato (1 small pot no flowers, 1 half buried large pot fruiting well)
1 ground cover peppermint(growing quickly)
1 sorrel (struggling)
4 sweet marjoram (struggling)
1 snapdragon (flowing again)
1 common ginger(struggling)
1 potato(very wilted)
1 box of onions
1 box of black seeded simpson lettuce
6 Impatiens
2 sedums?
Update 4 (11/7/2006):
There’s been a lot going on in the patio garden since I last updated this post. A Pigeon family moved in, raised as son? and moved out. Lots of plants died. Lots of plants fruited. A couple of vegetables appeared out of nowhere (I didn’t plant them). Lots was learned.
The Pigeon is a whole other story. We’ll leave that for later. I’ll tell the story by pot. The potato died shortly after the last entry, in a week. I don’t know why, couldn’t get close enough to feel the soil because of the pigeons. The potato was pretty much gone when I got a Red Dragon stonecrop. I thought it could handle the inattention and sun pretty well. In fact it thrived (more later), never getting more than 4 inches tall, spreading, and not blooming. Light affects the leaves; more light more red, less light more green. The roots seem to run shallow, though digging found some 8 inches down they could have belong to the flax. I think I was actually overwatering the pot since I was unable to check it. When the baby bird was out there I through some flax seeds out for him to eat and they sprouted. After ~2 months they are 1ft tall slender towers of small leaves. The leaf disease may have affected some of the older leaves. I put a dark bronze flowing mum in there today from a 3″ pot.
There are two 30″ tomoto pots. One with group of patio tomatoes. One with a Goliath bush tomato. Both had the leaf disease pretty bad at times and almost non-existent at other times. Temperature was a factor. When the weather is 70-89 there’s little or no disease. Consistent temps below bring it out and temps about bring it out. Though below 60 it doesn’t do much, but neither did the plants. The spearmint did ok, about as good as the marjoram. The tom’s took a long time to develop fruit. Only in the last 6 weeks has there been much harvested. There are still many green tomatoes on the bushes, more than have been harvested. The petunias in the Goliath pot are a fraction of the size when I got them. I fertilized with some of the pigeon pop, nothing noticeable changed.
The hops are really struggling to stay alive, but the pots have been very entertaining. The trellises have given birds a chance to pop all in the pots and there are seeds. I discovered a 2 small tomatoes and a sunflower plant coming from nowhere. The red petunias did great. The leaf disease just burned up the leaves faster than the hops could out run them. Next year there should be dirt and more experience fighting the disease.
The Okra did pretty good till temps dipped below 50 at night. It wasn’t able to replace the leaves that the disease got. For about 6 weeks it was producing an Okra per week. The main stalk is about 3ft on one and 2.5ft on the other. The petunias did good, having the largest single plant and the largest impatiens. This pot held the sphagnum moss the best and after 4-5 months it’s impossible to tell any was there.
The sage is suffering from a desication of it’s leaves. The leaf disease? I trimmed the rosemary quite a bit. Both grew very well. The potted Goliath bush tomato in the small pot did much better than I thought for such a small pot. It was half destroyed by a pigeon landing. The grape tomato, first to contract the leaf disease, survived all year. I had counted it out many, many times. Towards the end it seemed able to outrun or manage the disease. The width was about 3.5-4 ft, thin and scraggly, but flowering and fruiting. Based on it I would say tomato size is somewhat dependent on pot depth. It’s pot was no wider than the Goliath plant, but twice as deep.
Ah, the Cucumber/Chamomile pot. They all died. The last to go was the Chamomile. I through some radish seeds and another kind of stonecrop in the pot to keep it from being empty. The radishes took a while to get on their feet, but I could harvest half a dozen right now. The stonecrop runs between everything. It’s made of runners that attach themselves to the soil.
Lastly, the large lettuce box bred fungus gnats like you wouldn’t believe. So many that they killed everything in it. I was so disgusted that I let it sit for 6 wks and hit is hard with the bug chemicals, forget organic. I replanted it and the gnats are returning, but that’s for the winter garden.
I seriously considered tossing all the dirt and plants this year that were contaminated, but that’s a hard investment to surrender and in dirt I won’t have the ability to toss diseased dirt and start over. So, I’ve been figuring out what affects it, what spreads it, and who isn’t infectable. Aphids? or fungus gnats spread it like crazy. Weather affects it, antifungal sprays too. Steer Manure was one of the greats elements I have under my control. It takes a week or two to become noticeable. Nothing on liquid fertilizer and the soap sprays are almost worthless. You have to drowned the gnats. A few mists directly on them does nothing.
A lot of stuff went on this year. Next year I expect to have a house with yard enough to plant more. Maybe a rabbit, something to help create an ecological system. I don’t know what to do with it all sometimes. There was more okra than I could eat and if the tomatoes hadn’t gotten sick dito on them.
The final list is:
5 patio tomatos
1 grape tomato (almost dead)
1 sage(2-3 times bigger)
4 basil
1 fig
2 hops
2 okra
1 rosemary (unpurterbable!)
2 german chamomile
2 goliath bush tomato (1 small pot, 1 half buried large pot)
1 ground cover peppermint
1 sorrel (struggling)
3 sweet marjoram
1 snapdragon
1 box of onions
1 box of black seeded simpson lettuce
2 Impatiens
12 sedums (red dragon and ?)