This was only my second year gardening, and first year with my own yard 😤 Everything is in containers. I struggled a lot with figuring out a good place to put containers that got enough sunlight. I was trying to avoid the front yard because I was worried about car exhaust and grossness getting onto veggies, but when I finally caved and moved everything to the front it started growing much much better. Lots of things also got chomped by deer and groundhogs in the backyard. I had hoped that big containers would keep the groundhogs out but I caught one climbing up onto the top and eating all the seedlings. Lots of failures, lots of dead plants. I tried to plant some native flowers in the backyard hoping to get them to spread to the empty lot behind us, but no success. A lot of seeds got eaten by birds.
I had better luck with both veggie and flower starts that I bought from the local farmer’s market. I was SO CLOSE to getting sunflowers, the flower heads were coming out but then we had a big windy thunderstorm that knocked them over and they got all crispy after :( My only harvest this year are a couple of jalapeno peppers. I didn’t start anything indoors this year, but I definitely see the value in it now and I’m hoping to get a rack with grow lights set up over the winter.
What about you guys??
I have been running an experiment with growing collards in containers.
Started this last year, bought 5 plants from a hardware store and planted one each in a bucket (Lowe’s store and their logo bucket, the kind that you can buy Sheetrock compound/mud in).
I just used Miracle Grow potting soil, and once a week I’d feed them with Miracle Grow too.
The experiment was to see how well they would grow, and if they did well then how much could I harvest, but the main thing I wanted to know is if I could keep them alive and continue to harvest from them this year as well.
So, with all that in mind, then yes, they grew, but they didn’t make large heads that I could cut off to have bunches, but I was able to harvest them, and five plants enabled me to harvest enough, once a week, to get five to six large leaves bigger than my hand from each plant, once the plants got about two and a half feet tall. And it continued like that, but them steadily growing taller, up until the first hard frost of their first year.
When that first hard frost was coming, I was able to cover them up to protect them. Then they slowed down growing until spring weather of this year, and then it was back to business as usual for them, except since they were already established now, I was able to go back to picking off new large leaves from them earlier than the first go around from the previous year.
They are now another foot taller, and occasionally the lower stalk at the base of each plant tries to put new growth out, but I don’t want that to compete with the rest of the plant so I pull it off once any of it gets about an inch big.
Eventually I may try to see if I let any of that grow a little bigger if I could root it to propagate a new plant.
Anyway, I’m curious now to see how long I can keep these plants alive and producing.
I looked up, once, if collard plants are meant to be grown this way and info I found stated most types aren’t but there is one type that is cultivated to grow year after year, so I don’t know, I just know I have enough fresh greens each week that would equal a small head of cabbage or a large size head of lettuce and that makes me happy and is good enough for me. Also, anything I don’t get around to eating I can freeze for use later.