Last month my pal Sidney and I spent a very pleasant afternoon walking around Red Butte Garden. It's a Botanical Garden they have up at the U, and is really the only thing affiliated with the U that I like to spend any time at. They have all sorts of plants, and we happened to catch them on their Bulb Show weekend, where they showed off over 250,000 daffodils. On our way out, I picked up their community booklet to browse through. During that browse, I noticed they were offering a Container Gardening Class. Thinking of my gardening goal, I quickly signed up.
This past Thursday I drove up the hill to the class, which was being held at their Greenhouse. I have to say, I had an absolutely fabulous time, despite being on U of U property. The class was taught by one of their Master Gardeners, Michelle, and I shared a work station with two awesome ladies, Elaine and Emily. First, we went through a bit of a lecture and Q&A session. Then, they sent us out into the greenhouse to pick our plants. That's right, plants, meaning more than one. There were tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cantaloupe, eggplant, artichoke, swiss chard, and even a few flowers to choose from. Since I already had some tomatoes, I settled on a orange bell and a purple bell pepper, as well as a jalapeno. Knowing that eggplant and zucchini tend to spread out quite a bit, I had thought I wouldn't be able to do those in containers. But Michelle assured me that these were varieties meant for containers, so I grabbed one of each. Then it was back inside to put the plants in the pots.
We were each given a 15 gallon planter, which we were told could handle several plants. We filled them all the way to the top with a mixture of potting soil and ground coconut husks, then put the plants in. The final touch was to add some fertilizer known as "ozmicote" (not sure the spelling). Elaine and Emily and I worked together to fill all three of our pots, and I think we were all pleased with the results. We even swapped email addresses so that we could email each other with pictures of our vegetable bounty.
After that, it was home to put out the pot and fill it full of water. Michelle said the thing to do is to make sure you give them enough water that it spills out the bottom of the container. Thankfully, this task was helped out by the massive rainstorm we had the last three days. I'm told the plants will also need sun, so I'm hopeful the rain will stop at some point so that the sun can do it's work.
This morning I finally was able to finish my planting of the tomatoes. They were wilting a bit, but hopefully they will thrive in the well-watered and sunny space outside. I now have 5 tomato plants, 2 spicy pepper plants, 2 sweet pepper plants, 1 egg plant, 1 zucchini plant, some basil, and chives, as well as the begonia. And hopefully the weather gods will cooperate and give me a fruitful garden at the end of the summer.
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