My Delightfully Contained Garden

I don't have much experience in growing things, except that things grown in Virginia's red clay-soil never fared well, even with the soil composted and such. Up here, our landlord's garden used to extend nearly up to the back porch, and he and his wife would sell the fresh, organic produce from their driveway; now it's just a tiny patch in the back with weary soil that hasn't gotten rotated or fed in years. My husband and his mom planted veggies in 2008, before I first came to Canada, and the tomatoes, potatoes, onions, peppers, and zucchini did fabulously, but everything else either failed to grow or produced maybe one pitiful fruit.

So this year, I decided to try my own hand at gardening, but I was too lazy to turn up the untended plot in the back yard and get the soil treated and fed. So my MIL, Elisa, had the great idea to reclaim plastic containers and create a bucket garden! We punched holes in the bottoms, and I went to the farmers market and bought soil and lovely little plants.

I have two tomato plants, a cherry tomato climber, English cucumber, Spanish white onions, banana pepper, strawberry, lavender, Greek oregano, lemon balm, peppermint, and garlic.

I'll get snap peas if I can find a decent plant around here!

My banana pepper plant the other day. This baby pepper is now twice that length!

I like that my bucket garden is close to the house's side door, so I can pick up my watering can and tend to my plants without having to go far. We'll see how well they do!