{"id":5225,"date":"2013-09-02T05:48:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T12:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/?p=5225"},"modified":"2013-08-27T08:48:52","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T15:48:52","slug":"container-garden-update-vegetable-production-continues-well-into-late-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/container-garden-update-vegetable-production-continues-well-into-late-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Container Garden Update: Vegetable Production Continues Well into Late Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer I\u2019ve been growing vegetables in containers and reporting on my garden\u2019s progress. Container gardening is a frugal alternative for those without sufficient or appropriate space for a traditional vegetable garden. In case you\u2019d like to follow along with my adventures from the beginning, previous articles on this subject are, No Space to Grow Vegetables? Try Container Gardening as a Frugal Alternative<\/a>,\u00a0Frugal Container Vegetable Gardening in Action<\/a>\u00a0and Container Garden Update: the Bounty Begins!<\/a><\/p>\n

As we near September, my garden has been in full-swing for a month or more, producing a great bounty of vegetables. First the leafy greens – spinach and lettuce – appeared, along with their fellow cool-weather friends, radishes and green onions in June. Next came the green beans and jalape\u00f1os along with the herbs – parsley, oregano, chives, cilantro, basil, sage, thyme and marjoram in July. For the past few weeks, it has been a tomato, zucchini and summer squash extravaganza around here. Fortunately, I was prepared for the bounty of tomatoes<\/a> and have been putting them to good use so none of them have gone to waste.<\/p>\n

But even with all its production thus far, the garden is far from done. In mid-July, I planted another batch of green beans. Their growing season is short enough to fit in two harvests in a summer. I\u2019ll already be harvesting some of this \u201cfall crop\u201d within a few days. With the arrival of mid-August, I planted some additional seeds that, because they prefer a cooler growing temperature, will yield produce well into the autumn, including lettuce, spinach, radishes, green onions and carrots. Already all these new plantings have sprouted and are off to a vigorous start. Bear in mind, I\u2019ve used the second half of the seed packets I originally purchased in May for this fall planting so I\u2019m still operating within my ever-so-frugal budget of $100 for all my gardening supplies purchased this season, which included seeds, seedlings and potting medium. The containers I used were ones I already had on hand or were items I\u2019d repurposed into planters, like cat litter buckets and old dresser drawers. The only other expense of vegetable gardening has been water – and I\u2019ve been offsetting its cost in two ways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mindfully saving\/reusing water from the house.<\/strong> Instead of dumping the cat\u2019s water bowl or what\u2019s left in a glass down the drain, I save it in a pitcher that I use to water my containers. I\u2019ve also used water I\u2019ve used for boiling eggs – most any unsalted cooking water can be put to use in the garden.<\/li>\n
  2. Keeping a rain bucket in the garden<\/strong>. It\u2019s been dry this last month but when we do get some precipitation, the bucket collects any rainfall so I can use it to water my containers.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Although these solutions are a far cry from providing all the water my garden needs, they are helping to keep the water bill from getting out of control.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m certainly not an experienced gardener but what I didn\u2019t already know, I researched on the good ol\u2019 Internet and all my questions have been answered. Questions like, \u201cHow do I know when my Green Zebra heirloom tomatoes (which are still green when mature) and my Kentucky Beefsteak heirloom tomatoes (which are orange when mature) are ripe?\u201d And, why isn\u2019t my zucchini making any fruit? Yep, all asked and answered.<\/p>\n

    Container gardening has been an exciting, frugal and productive pastime this year. I highly recommend you try it yourself; it lends itself – at least to some degree – to nearly every housing situation.<\/p>\n

    Have you tried container vegetable gardening?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This summer I\u2019ve been growing vegetables in containers and reporting on my garden\u2019s progress. Container gardening is a frugal alternative for those without sufficient or appropriate space for a traditional vegetable garden. In case you\u2019d like to follow along with my adventures from the beginning, previous articles on this subject are, No Space to Grow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[510,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}