What's Going on in the Patio Garden? (End of May Update)

Since last month's update, a lot has been harvested (radishes, chard, herbs, greens and beets, plus the beet greens); pulled up because it wasn't producing (peas, cauliflower, radicchio and broccoli); and with the warm weather we've been having...a lot of the plants have grown.

When I took these photos about five days ago, I counted about 35 small tomatoes already growing...

and dozens and dozens of tomato blooms on the 10 tomato plants I currently have growing.

The Roma tomato is full of blooms!

I've added Blue Lake bush green beans, Christmas lima beans...

Trellising the Christmas lima beans, growing in a long pot with tarragon and using foil to try to get some reflective sunlight into the shady area.

a compact eggplant I purchased at Green Learning Station, zucchini, crookneck summer squash, and Chinese snake cucumbers.

Red Norland potatoes

The experiment with red potatoes growing in cloth grocery bags, covered in black plastic, continues...but they take up a lot of space I could be using for my newly acquired eggplant or squash that need more sunshine. I'm considering pulling up one of the potatoes in an effort to confirm that the experiment is actually working. The old me would have seen this as a complete waste, but I would love to know that the effort is worth it and documenting the process along the way is important to me. Red Norlands should only take about 60-75 days, so if they are actually growing properly, there should be some very small tubers in these bags already. [I'll keep you posted and blog about the entire experiment once the results are in!]

Overall, I'm pretty pleased. I'm more than a little frustrated with spring and fall crops as it seems our weather goes from hot to cold or cold to hot, thus making it difficult for cool weather crops to grow in the limited amount of space I have. 

But gardening is a continual education. I think that's one reason of many that I love it. You can never rest on last year's success. You have to constantly adapt to the weather, resources and time you have available. Thus, I think I'm hanging up my cool-weather-crop-hat until I can live somewhere that I can have space for a cold frame or a larger greenhouse. I'll continue to try cold weather crops in my friends' gardens though if that's something they want to pursue.

I'll leave you with one of my "successes". Ruby Red Chard. 

This is the first time I've grown chard in a large pot. I've always been content to eat baby chard, but had decided to let it grow bigger this season. I have harvested some baby chard, but just this week had leaves large enough to wrap around my Adzuki bean burger. Needless to say, I'll be allowing my chard to get bigger from now on!

**For additional photos of what's going on in my patio garden, you can follow me on Twitter. See the link on the upper left of this post.**