Container Gardening

This year I'm going to grow my tomatoes in Topsy Turveys hanging from the roof beam of my deck. I want to know how well the system works. If it works well, it frees deck space for containers full of other plants. Also, high up in the air where he can't reach them, Larkyn will not be able to eat my tomatoes before I harvest them, as he did last year. I think I'm going to choose the variety called Celebrity which is a good container tomato, but I've got time to change my mind if I find a different variety I'm curious about. I'm not planting them until the week of Mother's Day.

Growing in my recycled Monrovia containers I collected last year, I currently plan:

2 5-gallon containers with broccoli plants

3 2-gallon containers with peppers: a green bell, a banana, and a jalapeno

5 1-gallon containers with herbs: two kinds of basil, rosemary, thyme, and chives or parsley

1 2-gallon pot of pickling cucumbers

I'm still thinking about whether I want to try bush beans and summer squash. Since I want a little room for flowers, I may not have room for everything I'm thinking about. Although my deck is large for an apartment deck, I also want to be able to go out there to eat and read and write. If I am out there, Larkyn will be too. I'm wondering whether I could grow summer squash plants in a Topsy Turvey.

Right now, all I've got is the two fancy pots full of arborviteas from winter (the ones that weren't supposed to survive). I had hoped to get a garden plot in a community garden and I am on a waiting list. But my desire to grow ornamentals only on my deck is probably not going to be fulfilled. I am trying to tell myself that I'm better off with containers that are immediately to hand and so very manageable. I try to tell myself that I'm lucky to have a big deck at the price I pay in rent. I try to tell myself that many of my customers are yardless and growing anything they can in containers and that my experience helps both them and me. But the last time I had a community garden plot about one-third of the plots were abandoned as soon as their owner realized how much work vegetable gardening is. I already know that.

But I expect I'll container garden this summer and enjoy doing so. The most arduous part of container gardening is keeping all the pots uniformly moist. With a water faucet in the kitchen twenty feet away, that's not too difficult.

Driving

I love to drive. Well, maybe not when the roads are icy or in a storm of any kind or at night. But none of those weather conditions have applied this spring when I have driven in a leisurely manner down Highway 101 through Minnetonka, Wayzata, and a bit of Hopkins down to Eden Prairie. Today I went to the Hennepin County Extension Office in Eden Prairie to get soil sample kits. I gave out the last one I had last Saturday and I'm sure I'll want a number of them this coming Saturday, and maybe sooner. The weather favors busy garden centers as much as it favors my driving pleasure.

Highway 101 is windy and potholed, but passes through lovely, Arcadian estates, formerly the lake homes of wealthy Minneapolitans around Lake Minnetonka. Today the trees and shrubs were budding out in a thousand colors of green. Here and there a professional gardener was cleaning out a flower bed or raking out old mulch, wearing jackets with company names written across the back. Tulips are about three inches high and fluffy-looking but promising some vivid color soon. I drove as slowly as I dared, with Lexus SUVs and Audi sportsters on my tail. I guess if you live there, you don't need to look.

Of course, driving fast on narrow, bumpy, winding roads is a skill too, the more so in a powerful sports car, I suppose. I drive a 1998 Ford Contour. It has been such a big part of my life as a single person that I cannot imagine wanting a different car. And I've been very loyal to Ford over the years, previously driving Escorts. So when I finally have to get a new car, it won't be a Lexus or an Audi. I'm proudly middle class, but I'd be happier buying a new Ford if I thought it was really American made the way Fords used to be.

When I get through the Lake Minnetonka lake estates and reach Minnetonka, I turn off Highway 101 onto Minnetonka Boulevard going east. I turn south again on Williston Road or Baker Road. Both go into Eden Prairie west of Prairie Center Drive where the Extension office is located, so requiring one more jog on Highway 5 or Technology Drive. All this way I'm driving through the back yards of very nice suburban homes. These are the yards that most of my customers have and I like to familiarize myself with how they look coming out of winter.

They look good. All the trees and shrubs are leafing early this year. We've been exceptionally warm for several weeks, bringing leaf bud and bud break, a hazy swarm of greens. Wonderful! On my car's radio I listen to two DFL governor candidates discussing education funding, the yards and all their plants are greening spectacularly, and my car handles smoothly. I could whiz down to Eden Prairie in 20 minutes on Interstate 494, but why do that when I can enjoy, no love, driving the back roads, seeing the landscape of my community.