Khavanu: Summer Garden Plantings

The latest new additions to the patio backyard garden pretty much max out the available space so that the area surrounding the walk out space is entirely committed to growing food and plants or composting them for plant and vegetable food.

The spring veggies have been producing for almost 3 weeks. Lots of lettuce, spinach, and radishes. Cilantro finally took off, and beets, carrots, and spring onions have all gone slow. There was a heat wave in late April and I think it slowed down the growth of many items. Anyone out there have luck with arugula? My neighbor and I have been comparing our veggies, and we both have found arugula to grow painfully slow. Next time, I'll start the spring seeds indoors in early February, and set them out early to mid-March.

Enough babble. On to the new stuff:

A newly constructed raised bed
A donated wood barrel
Summer veggalies including Texas A&M jalapeno peppers, yellow pear tomatoes, ichiban eggplant, better bush tomatoes, black beauty zucchini, and crookneck summer squash (all starters from a mega giant store and one local gardening store).
Flowers including zinnias, marigolds, nasturtiums, and aster (all from seed)
Herbs including Genovese basil, red basil, oregano, marjoram, and thyme (all from seed).

Last year, I tried growing squashes in containers, and they grew amazingly all through the first month only to become weighted down and die. Sad face. Maybe they will do much better in the raised beds. There are so many online resources for how I learned about raised beds and container gardening. Texas A&M University's Cooperative Extension site helped me figure out how to put in raised bed. Other sites that were equally helpful include:
The WikiHow page
This Texas A&M Container Gardening site &
This Colorado State one

See now you have all the resources for a raised bed and container gardening!

This is the site for the raised bed: