Gardening With a Black Thumb ...And Why It's Ok to Scale Back

We had great expectations at the beginning of the summer (read: before we had near-record highs above 100 for 23 straight days). In almost twenty containers, we started everything from tomatillos to basil, dill to peppers, squash to beans....And we're sad to report that almost everything has died. Some tomatoes (lucky enough to be planted in the ground) are thriving, and there's one pot of basil still kicking.

But we're not discouraged...

Last night, with our small tomato harvest, we had our most local dinner to date: pasta with sauce made from tomatoes and basil from our patio and onions from my mom's garden 30 miles away. It was wonderful, but over dinner, the discussion found its way to disappointment in our little- to no-yield gardening efforts.

We decided that we need to know when to scale back. Neither of our patios gets much sun, so for the fall, we are going to narrow it down to ten or fewer containers with herbs and maybe, just maybe we'll try one other fall crop.

Someday, we'll have the space, not to mention available sunlight, needed for a high-yield garden, but right now we're content to work with what we have, and use the time and energy (and money) we save trying to plant crops of small-space veggies at the farmers' market!

How is your summer garden growing?

Comments (6)

Tips for container gardening in Texas (high heat):

1. Large pots. As big as you can get. Small pots will dry out too soon.

2. Part shade for everything. Even if the tag says full sun. My herbs are in part sun and growing fabulously.

3. I've had success with herbs. Never with tomatoes. The fruit doesn't come out right--from what I understand it's from extremes of wet and dry. I have seen a friend grow tomatoes in one of those upside down stands. Again, it has to be large. Rosemary, thyme, basil, mint, sage, oregano have been very successful for me.

4. Wait til fall if summer doesn't work.

@ Kelley, THANK you for the words of encouragement! My mom said the same thing about larger containers, and you've got a point about the partial shade: the plants that are still alive definitely have those two things in common. And fall will be here before we know it. :)

Thanks to our out-dated and retrogressive horticultural education you evidently don't know about eco-friendly sub-irrigation planters (some call them SIPs). Instead you used dumb drain hole pots that waste water, time...and eventually the plants. There's still time to try them this year Amber. You will become a believer.

Mmm... sensing that Greenscaper is selling something... I've been pretty successful with plain old big pots with dumb drainage holes. No water wasted; I just use what comes out of the tap when I'm waiting for warm water in the morning.

Anyway. In part shade, you'll have better luck with leafing crops than fruiting ones. I've been lucky to have nothing keel in the heat yet (incredibly). I don't water everyday - but I do check everyday.

I'm sorry to hear about your garden woes. While in great conditions it's pretty easy to grow food, I think a failure like this is a good reminder of how dependent most of us are on our food suppliers. Growing enough food in quantity to feed ourselves is fraught with the possibility of failure and unforeseen problems. For example, here on the east coast blights are beginning to hit home potatoes & tomatoes. In the northeast where i live, a number of local organic farms have lost crops to overwhelming rain and cool temps.

Thankfully, my mother's garden is only 30 miles down the road.... and the Farmers' Market is only 5 miles away, so all of our summer produce has still come from a very, very local source--and that means we're not reliant on a big-box food provider (and yes, we just saw Food, Inc., this weekend!). Just not as local as the back patio.

Perhaps the fall garden will be more fruitful! Thanks for all the tips. I'll look into SIPs, Greenscaper.