Horse Trough Gardening - Progress Report

Lettuce

We planted romaine and red-leaf romaine lettuce on May 2nd from organic starts purchased at Browne Lumber/Nursery in Friday Harbor. In two weeks we began harvesting it and have been having dinner salads ever since. It's still going strong. We've given away bags full to neighbors and friends. Above is how it looks today. (The foreground is radishes and carrots.)

Radishes

Lots of luck with our radishes! We planted them from seed sometime around May 15th, thinned about 100 of them out on June 8th, leaving about 60 plants, all of which are looking and tasting quite delicious! Again, we have enough to give many away. We'll plant more when we've harvested all of these.

Carrots

The only problem with planting carrots and radishes together in the same row is that when we pull up the radishes it's almost impossible not to put out several young carrot plants whose delicate tops are intertwined with the radish tops.

Green Peppers

Fun to see these starting to develop! The powdery mildew problem seems under control, with removal of heavily affected leaves and spraying the others (see here).

Summer Squash

Despite our cool spring (and temps only today reaching 70 degrees for the first time), the squash is flowering nicely, portending an adequate crop. We're a bit concerned that the spacing may be too crowded. Time will tell.

Beets

Our beets continue to look promising, even though we've been harvesting the tops from time to time. (See delicious recipe here.) On a few of them, we're just starting to see the top of the beet. They grow tall and might be better placed at the rear of the trough, moving the radishes to the front next year.

The Whole Schamole!

This is how the garden looks from the lower (Southwest) corner, looking up at the troughs. We're mighty pleased with the whole system so far. Our only concern is that the water reservoir in the bottom of the troughs does not seem to be wicking upward, because we never need to add water to the reservoir. We do top-water a little each evening, although it doesn't seem to require much water. We wonder if it will begin to wick more as the temperatures increase this summer.

Speaking of summer, happy solstice to all!