Back in the Mix

The tomatoes are in and the world is in bloom.

The gardening month has been made "interesting" due to my dealing with a walking cast and a strict order from my podiatrist not to work in the garden. So it's been a bit of teaching for both Ryan and Abby (the latter, being 6 and having a very short attention span, picking a weed or two then wandering off). I've taught Ryan how to mow the lawn without running over the power cord, which is pretty good, considering how likely an event that actually is.

Looking over the tomatoes at the heirloom-specific Tomatomania this year, I was convinced that I needed these cool pulp pots, essentially large pots made out of old pulp that can be used for a couple years, then break down in the compost. Okay, maybe I was dreaming that last part, but that was my original intention before I discovered they had none of them by the time I got there. 12 o'clock on the second day of the sale. They're pretty hot, these pots.

We bought our normal boatload of tomatoes, for us - 6 plants, and I went home wondering where the hell I was going to put all these things. Like all plants and puppies, when you get them they're so small and cute you wonder why you didn't get 20 or 30, never realizing that they will take over your home rather quickly. I've learned to limit myself (and Ryan) over the years. Which is ironic, since Ryan loves to buy plants but refuses to eat most vegetables.

I had been reading online a lot about these EarthBoxes, which are essentially containers within containers that allow you to water at the bottom and grow more in a small space than you ever dreamed possible. Well, that's what the ads say. The ads also say that they run about $55 apiece not including shipping. Which would put me in the $200 range for planting all the tomatoes I just bought (3 per box).

Why not plant in the ground, you ask? Very smart question. We've been planting in the ground and in planters for a few years now (trying interesting techniques like an inground terra cotta pot full of water to help keep the ground around the plants moist), but the problem is that you're supposed to rotate your "tomato" crop in three year cycles. Which means if I plant a tomato outside my back door this year, I'll be waiting three years until I can put another tomato plant there. I don't know about you, but I live in the middle of a rather large city. And my whole front yard is a jungle. I don't have a heck of a lot of space to plant my leggy, thirsty tomato plants.

The clever thing about container gardening is that you can put the same tomato in the same place year after year.

That's the plan anyway. Finish the season in October, dump the soil, wash out the pots, put some lettuce in, then use the same pot in the same place next year for tomatoes.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, since I have absolutely no fruit as of yet.

After reading forums about creating your own "EarthBox" and deciding, yes, they work, but I'll be damned if I'm putting one more ugly thing in my yard (ask me about my radial tires!), I went with a company called The Garden Patch.

I know, they had to search long and hard to come up with a worse name than EarthBox, but by gum I believe they nailed it.

So I sat on my chair and directed my 9-year-old son to haul around the 30+ pound bags of soil and my dear Abigail to stop listening to High School Musical 3 long enough to put at least one scoopful of dirt into the container. She actually was good enough to help me haul them, one by one, back to the back of the house and try not to squirt the hose at me. (Which went something like this: "Hmm, the directions say DO NOT GET THE FERTILIZER PACK WET BEFORE PLANTING.... Ack!!! Abby!!! Put down the hose, PUT DOWN THE HOSE!!! AHHHHH!!!!" Something like that.)

We got all the tomatoes in and the fertilizer packets stayed relatively dry.

I did not.

And I tried not to look fazed later in the day, upon going back to the garden store, when Ryan picked out a seedling for a pumpkin called Big Max.

Would you laugh when I told you that it supposedly grows pumpkins up to 75 pounds?

Yeah, I wonder where that's going to go...