A good time to take stock of what worked

By Angela O'Callaghan

Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009 | 1 a.m.

The end of summer is the right time to do a roundup of this past season's garden. My garden is always a set of little experiments. These are nothing particularly scientific, more to satisfy my own curiosity.

Last year, I built a set of tiny raised beds, 30 inches square and less than a foot high, to optimize the growing space in my little backyard. Leafy greens – spinach and leaf lettuce – grew well, but bolted early. This year, I grew herbs in them, and put all vegetables in pots. Pots could be an "iffy" proposition in our climate, but I decided to look at each pot as a mini garden plot, and treat it accordingly.

The pots I used were the biggest ones I could find on clearance sale. They were attractive, made of either plastic or condensed foam. Although terra cotta containers are gorgeous - no clay pots. In this desert climate, they are not practical. They are costly and fragile. Not only fragile, but being made of clay, they begin to degrade when it gets really hot and dry.

I had tomatoes, peppers, salad greens, even potatoes. I could move their pots around until I found the best spot for light, shade and protection from the wind for each mini-garden. Then I tackled the watering question. There was no way that I would water with a hose and a watering can twice a day. Fortunately, my drip irrigation system is set up so that I could add emitters with relatively small volume – one for each pot.

Because plants in pots are more likely to dry out, I used a "double potting" approach. This literally means putting one pot inside a larger one. The inner pot need not be particularly attractive. To insure drainage, I placed it on top of rocks inside the larger pot. Having the inner pot sit on two or three inches of big rocks gave ample room for excess water to drain. As it evaporated, that water theoretically improved the humidity around the plants.

Each crop had its own preferences. For salad greens, I took a small handful of seeds in early February, and scattered them over the top of the soil. I pressed them down enough so they'd be covered, watered thoroughly, and placed it where it got northern exposure: virtually no direct light. We were eating fresh cut salad every day for most of a month. Once it became hot, these plants faded.

I plan on repeating the process beginning next week. Plants like lettuce and spinach will grow when the temperatures are lower than 80 degrees. I hope to keep this going through Thanksgiving by adding new seeds every week.

Salad greens are easy. I have not harvested the potatoes yet. What about the stars of the garden? How successful were the tomatoes and the even more fussy peppers? The short answer is – pretty well. I will talk about them in detail next time.

Angela O’Callaghan is the area specialist in social horticulture for the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. She can be reached c/o the Home News, 2275 Corporate Circle, Suite 300, Henderson, NV 89074, or [email protected].