Yuuup! I'd always wanted to delve into container gardening anyway........ When your garden fills, things spill over into raised beds and/or containers......... We're in need of therapy! LOL

Wow! That's a lot of $$$ in potting mix.

How do you water them all?

Dave

The hose is not far, just over by the house a few feet away. I just take the hose and water each pot when needed.

I have been buying lots of potting mix but not all at once because I buy as I have been filling pots.

I am learning as I go about doing the containers. For instance last summer I had two patio tomatoes in containers but I found I really didn't like growing tomatoes in containers. So no container tomatoes this year.

I do like having the eggplant in containers and so far the squash and zucchini are doing well also.

holy smoke! You must have spent a small fortune on all those containers!

Actually I had almost all of them. When I wanted to plant something I just pulled another container out of the garage.

As a container gardener myself..I say Wow! Your plants look great!!! I need you to come help me organize.

One word comes to mind... "hoarder". Seriously though, looks nice and I've done the same myself.

NIce Rita!

Just a suggestion though for the summer heat and aeration -- pallets or bricks underneath. It really helps.

I agree. Tomatoes in containers seems "fruitless."

Kevin

It is a VERY NICE POT GARDEN by itself. And its maintenance (feeding, watering ..) is much more difficult than an in-ground garden. Some of those pot , in a hot day, might require watering twice a day. But , when those are definitely your babies and you know how to raise them: D

Not to worry anyone. The driveway pot garden is very near my kitchen door and very near the hose. I am out there all the time and check to see if it needs water.

62 is a lot of tomato plants! Do you put up sauce? I've got some italian paste ones going this year. I did some last year as well, about 5 plants and I ended up eating them all in fresh sauce. I have about 20 plants altogether this year and still probably won't be enough to put up as much as I'd like.

I'm going to try a traditional italian fermenting method to make paste, that is described in Sandor Katz' latest book.

Two years ago I started 50 tomatoes and kept them in pots. I hardly got anything from them. I also learned that tomatoes do best in ground, even if the soil is less than optimum. What I deemed as the worst problem with the pots I have is that they are black and absorb a lot of heat. It was more difficult to keep them watered properly.

I got a lot of my pots from the trash at nurseries. They sometimes throw away a dead plant or tree pot and all. I had permission of course. One nursery I found literally has a pot graveyard and they just let anyone take them. I did have to pay for some of my 10 and 20 gallon pots, but not nearly what they would have cost new.

I saved pots thru the years, especially any big ones. So I had a lot of pots to use.

I did try patio tomatoes in pots last year and got decent production but I just didn't like tomatoes in pots. So all my tomatoes and peppers too in ground and always will be planted that way from now on. And no patio tomatoes this year. Not much flavor.

I went totally overboard on the tomato plants. Last year I had about 50 plants and had tomatoes galore. So I give away bags and bags of them to friends and neighbors.

This year I am trying a lot of things to see how it works. But from what I see so far, I think next year going to go heavily on the eggplant and zucchini and summer squash in pots. They seem to be thriving.

I also have melons in pots and that seems to work well also. But we will see what happens when the vines get much longer. But they seem to like it, nice and green and growing and setting flowers.

Wow, I thought 24 plants was a lot to handle at my previous home. Hats off to you.

About the containers...seems that I have the exact opposite problem that you have. My tomatoes love my new GeoPots, but my eggplant, peppers, and string beans are either struggling, infected, or being attacked by insects.

{{gwi:75441}}

{{gwi:19937}}

{{gwi:75442}}

wow, your tomatoes look great.

Have the same problem every year. My solution is to smother another portion of grass & create new areas to plant more. My husband calls it the incredible shrinking lawn. What am I going to do when I don't have any more grass to take out?

Put pots on the driveway or patio?

Have already filled one patio with pots. I'm not sure how the other 2 (soon to be 3) drivers would feel about losing their parking spots.

My car keeps moving down the driveway as I add more pots. But the harvest makes it all worth it.

Yesterday I picked this larger than normal Zucchini (that I had missed) and stir fried it to eat with dinner.
{{gwi:70192}}

For lunch I had picked these two smaller summer squash which I broiled up and ate. They were yummy.
{{gwi:70193}}

Here is one of the yellow squash still on the plant before I picked it.
{{gwi:75443}}

Love it! Why did I never think of using tomato cages for beans?

There are bean seedlings comming up already from the seeds I planted around those bean towers. (really tomato towers).

I have to drag out more pots from the garage soon as I planted these seeds of Golden Egg yellow squash and they are comming up.

Bean towers are doing great with the bean plants growing.

Even my container grown bush beans finially have flowers.

I read a book by a famous French author of nineteenth centure (sorry forgot hisname) aout peasants who always want more land, sometime I remind myself of them, constantly trying to find more growing space One year I had three plots in community gardens plus the one at home!

Jun 21st those Golden Egg Seedlings were just popping up and today they are already growing like wildfire.

The driveway pot getto this afternoon.

It looks beautiful! Way more pleasing to the eye than looking at concrete.

beautiful!! Hats off to you newyorkrita. I am impressed!! I am a beginner, how do you 'know' when to water your veggies? I water everyday. Is that too much?

I just look in the pots and can see from how the potting mix looks if it needs water or not. But pots can dry out quickly so you really have to pay attention.

Cavilli Zucchini which I grew from Seed getting ready to have its first blossom.

"One word comes to mind... "hoarder".

Actually, the word that came to my mind was "dedication". That is an impressive amount of work.

Maybe it would be easier to just build a raised bed over that section of driveway?

When I was living in a home with little usable land, I looked for unused land nearby, and contacted the owners. You can often strike a deal in exchange for the right to garden, such as rent, property upkeep, or sharecropping. A previous employer allowed me to garden behind the plant, he liked the added security I provided after hours. I gardened on a utility easement, in exchange for cleaning up trash on the property, and on part of a vacant field, in exchange for keeping the rest of the field mowed. I've spent about 30 years gardening on other people's property, usually with water provided... because of those arrangements, my children grew up eating a lot of fresh vegetables. Food for thought.

Thank you Zeedman. All excellent suggestions and ideas. But I am very happy with my driveway pot getto. It is only a few feet from my baqck door so therefore not difficult to take care of. Water is also right there for watering the pots. Best of all, all pots are moveable. I would never put a perment raised bed there.

Nice setup!

It occurs to me that if you've run out of space, but haven't run out of pots, you might want to do some double potting. Maybe it isn't an issue where you live, but in a hot climate, container gardening can be hard because the roots overheat. The effect of that is that the active root ball becomes smaller than the pot, because roots at the periphery die. So your plants get even more pot-limited than you think they are. Double potting helps to insulate the pot, and at least keep direct sun off their sides.

That little zucchini on the July 5th picture grew up and was a nice big one today. I cut it and had it for lunch.

Nice and fat too.

More Cavilli fruits comming soon!

newyorkrita,

That looks great!! I garden exclusively in containers and raised beds. I cut down on the expense of potting mix by mixing 50% potting mix with pine bark fines and perlite. Dump it all in a cement mix bin and stir with a garden hoe. (well DH does the mixing)

I still need more space for extra containers but DH wants to keep his boxwood bushes.

DL