The Grande Garden Toure Part 3

And now we find ourselves entering Part 3 of the Grande Garden Toure : The Deck

My deck is on the east side of my house, and is enclosed on two sides by my house, with a very large shed on most of the other side. As a result it gets very hot on sunny days (as well as sun pretty much all day long) and so it's a perfect spot to grow things! I'm very much a fan of pot-growing, since that's how I started into herbs as a teenager and it's so handy to have plants right there by the house (I actually use the herbs in cooking when they're close by!). Last year I just did several pots of tomatoes, which did really well except for the fact that my kids thought it was great fun to pick all the green tomatoes off, take one bite, and then toss them. I think I got one or two tomatoes last year that made it to actual edibility before the fall rains set in and all my tomatoes got blight.

So this year I still put some tomatoes on my deck, but my mom had the clever idea to use the other side of my shed to put several pots of tomatoes (pics of those guys to come). This relieved me of having to cram my deck with tomatoes, so I've been able to add some new things.

Here are two of my tomato plants. This is the first year putting pots on the right side of my doorway, since I wasn't sure they'd get quite enough sun here since it gets shade in the morning, but I thought I'd give it a shot. The one on the right I am attempting to grow with the single stalk method (which my farmer friend tried to explain to me this spring) where you only allow one main stem and it grows really tall and is supposed to produce more tomatoes. However, I'm not sure I am doing it right. It's growing tall, but not so hot on the tomatoes. I think I may be pinching off the wrong things. I need to talk to my friend again.

 On the left side of my back door I have five more pots. This year I also installed the two window boxes (I have two more to put up on the other side and just haven't done it yet. I am growing parsley in the right one and cilantro in the left. My parsley's doing good, but that stinker cilantro barely grew at all and just went straight to seed. Grr. I think I may have left it in it's little starter pots too long?
The three pots below against the house all do have tomatoes in them as well, but the two on the right are itty bitty because about a month after I planted them in the pots, my 4-year old son found a pair of scissors I had unwisely left laying around and snipped all but three of my tomato plants off right at the base. The ones to the right and the one in the corner were spared. Luckily, these two had enough of a stem left that they grew back (though I'm unsure of whether they'll actually get to giving any tomatoes). There is a little sprig of thyme growing in with the tomato in the corner. That whole pot originally was thyme, but this spring only a little bit of it had survived the winter. So I let that little bit grow (and I'm glad I did, it looks much happier now than it did this spring) and put a tomato in with it so as to not waste space.

 The first layer of my deck ends here, where I put two more large pots (originally tomatoes, but unfortunately these guys did not have any stem left at all and completely died after my son snipped them, so I pulled the tomatoes out and planted in each a quinoa, three clumps of sweet peas, and a balsam, all of which I had started in the house and needed somewhere to go. All of these have grown beautifully, especially the sweet peas (except for the aphids which have recently been trying to inhabit my sweet peas and I keep determinidly hosing them off - my next plan is to go out and spray the plants with soapy water since I finally got another spray bottle I can use). I am excited since this is my first try at growing quinoa, and since I was diagnosed with celiac this spring (which means I can't eat gluten - wheat, barley, rye, or malt, and maybe oats) I have discovered I love quinoa and hope it is as easy to grow as they say it is! The two little pots on the left are a couple of blueberry plants, which a friend most generously gave to me when they heard I had only one lonely little blueberry (which, by the way, DID produce a single blueberry but the birds got to it before I did *sigh*).

In the second level of my deck, I have found this odd little nook to be a great place to stash some extra plants. Right now it's got my nice sage plant which I started in my teenage years and still continues to grow wonderfully. Sage is one of my favorite herbs to use in cooking, so I love having the italian sage right next to my back door. Sage is one of those herbs I am rather obsessed with since it has so many different varieties, but since the regular italian sage is the best for cooking, that is the only one I am determined to keep close. That little green pot has nothing in it but weeds right now (I had put a little root in there I found in my flower bed, but it didn't grow). And then the other two pots on the left have mints - the light green is apple mint (the regular "plain" mint which is my favorite) and then some chocolate mint (a new discovery of mine last year). Mint is another herb I am obsessed with all its varieties. I would really like to get some peppermint (very useful herbally) and also some spearmint and some wintergreen mint eventually. The black pot to the right has a third blueberry plant, and the little black pot on the left (which I cut off in the picture) is what I think is a peony plant, given to me by a friend of a friend, but it really looks quite pathetic and my mom says peonies are rather particular about their growing conditions, so I may just abandon the poor thing (we'll see how it's doing next spring).