Another Week Another Pot

I keep planting more and more pots and bins and whatever I can find. I'm STILL not up to the 9X20 parking space area!! If I count the sparse berry patch I can get there almost with plenty of room left for walkways among the pots and between the raised bed and the pots AND enough room for 4 or 5 5-gallon buckets of water that I leave out to warm up to air temperature before watering. This is recommended in the "Square Foot Garden" book and also lets the chlorine dissipate before I use them. I've also been setting the buckets under the eaves (no fancy crap like roof gutters and downspouts here) to catch rain and morning dew run off. For most of a week I got all the garden water from there. Why am I watering when it rains you may well ask? Well, it's been raining SO MUCH that the raised bed was getting waterlogged, as were the containers. So the raised bed and many of the pots are actually covered to avoid their getting overly wet and drowning the plants. It already looks like one strawberry start is croaking.

BUT: The following appear (note APPEAR) to be doing well:

2 of the tomatoes in pots have actual tiny tomatoes on them.
1 of the peppers that suffered major setbacks in the raised bed is showing clear new growth.
The mint in a pot is growing gang busters.
Onions in garden and in pots are growing tops fast.
The 8 radishes in the raised bed (time to plant 8 more) are growing nice tops though no radish development yet. Last year I had giant radish tops that never did grow the bulbous bits for eating. Still, it's all green manure for the garden so it's all good.

The 7, yes, 7...and I'm tempted to plant more...containers of potatoes are growing leaves fast and furious. The 4 planted early, mid-May, are almost full. I let the leaves grow up a few inches, then bury with more soil/compost. Then let them grow again then bury again until the containers are full. The purple potatoes were off to the fastest start, but now the yukons are catching up. I have two russets that have grown eyes and if I had enough dirt and a container, they'd be planted too.
Carrots, beats, peas, spinach, parsley, chard, lettuce, kale, calendula, basil, and cilantro appear to have sprouted and started growing. We'll see if that's what is really there.
The volunteer squash/melon is growing nice leaves. It will be intersting to see what it turns out to be.

I planted many more pots on Saturday. I even put some cherry tomato seeds in a pot or two to see if they will actually grow and fruit. The package says they will and I got some cherry toms last year, but I think that was from a start, not seed. We'll see.

I also planted more herbs, echinacea, calendula, a bean, and other things in pots just to see if they will work. A rack to hold 4inch pots blew into the yard during one of the recent rainstorms so I kept it. I have plenty of 4inch pots from buying starts the last few years and I may use it to start some kale or bigger lettuces for fall.

I wish I had a rhubarb plant. The neighbors have a GIANT one, but I have not been able to convince it to cross the fence like its pal the raspberry patch did. I wonder if the neighbors are pissed about that.

I meant to plant quinoa and lentils this year but forgot and I think I need deeper soil. If I find another big pot or bucket, I'll give it a try.

It's already apparent that if I were a good gardener, I could grow a buttload of food in a parking spot!