In my quest to dominate container gardening I have drawn out a bit of design. I know what I want to grow and what I'm going to grow it in, and where and on which deck. I seldom follow any of these plans verbatim and this project was no exception. The plan was to find a long container and plant two rows of carrots in one and a row of peas and carrots in the other. This is what happened.
First the container. I had a hard time finding a container long and deep enough for what I wanted, (without building one which I may do later.) This is the best I could do. Not very long but pretty deep. This came from Canadian Tire and is actually meant to fit over the railing. I knew that it would not fit over my railing when I purchased the container, but thats okay. The added depth of the trough will be perfect for the carrots.
Next I had to address the growing medium. Soil. I am currently Laid Off during the Olympics and although I have a job to go back to, finances are tight, so we have put ourselves on a very strict No Spending Budgets. Bills and Groceries only. So I could not purchase any soil specific to this project and had to make do with what I had, which was a partial bag of Keefer's West Coast Container Mix, a hodgepodge bucket of reused potting mixes, left over "garden mix," composted soil from the District of North Vancouver, and a bucket of "junk" soil I tried unsuccessfully to us as a patio sandbox material for Cillian.
For the first pot I combined the "Garden Mix," the reused, and the junk soil and mostly filled the container, then topped it off with the Keefer's Container Mix.
The second pot was a comprised of the Keefer's and garden mix with a little of the reused mix.
This is where I first deviated from the original design. My Kale seedling are still young but knowing that I will need to transplant them soon and having nowhere to put them at this point I decided to plant one on either end of the carrot- peas container.
Using a table spoon I carefully removed 4 seedlings from the fullest Kale pots...
and planted one on each end of the new containers.
Then I made a 1/2" trough along the front of the container for the Carrots.
I poured some seeds from the Johnny's Selected Seeds Pouch into the spoon and began planting dropping them into the trough. I left about six inches from the Kale, so the Kale won't shadow the carrots too much.
You can plant the seeds 3/4-1" apart and then thin the seedling to 2" later. Not wanting to have to toss the unwanted seedlings, I spaced them about 2" apart now.
Then I dug another trough along the back and plant the peas about an inch apart.
I'm not as worried about the peas being dominated by the Kale as the peas are a vine and will grow higher then the Kale and they should live in harmony.
I placed on container on the East deck. I will either move this pot back against the railing or build a small trellis for the peas later.
The second container I put on the North Side against the railing so the pea vines can grow up them. I shuffled the other pots and containers around to accommodate.
The last thing is to water. While at the store I found organic fertilizer from Rubicon made from concentrated seaweed. As per the directions I added 1/2 teaspoon to my watering can which is about one liter.
I watered the contain enough to penetrate the soil and repeated a couple days later. The idea is to keep the soil moist but not swampy or over saturated.
