I am loving the Greenstalk vertical planters. We are now up to 5 in the "tree yard". We successfully grew potatoes, pepper, cucumbers, beans, and of course tomatoes in them this year. We didn't use all the tiers for our towers as that made them taller then I could easily reach to fill the water reservoir. That means we have extra tiers that we filled and used as planters. This year it was squash in them, next year will be potatoes and my squash will move to the front yard planters.
Front yard did okay for potatoes but my tomatoes didn't really do well. They neither grew well nor produced well. Time to move them to another area or try something different for the seedlings.
What was exciting and very interesting to me were the three direct sown tomato plants I had. We were eating cherry tomatoes off them and I even have a few held back for seeds! Their breeder is in Montana and is working on developing tomatoes that can be direct sown in their climate that will produce usable tomatoes before winter kills them. That experiment will be tried again in spring with my seeds and other varieties from him. ...
I had ordered trees from Starks Bros and they kept changing the shipping date as I slowly watched the planting window get smaller and smaller. After the last change that would have had them here AFTER the planting window I contacted them and canceled the order. IF I order or buy trees again I will spend the funds at either Fedco or locally... but honestly I am about ready to give up on them especially since I umm sorta took over their growing area with my new beginning project.
New Beginnings this year
We have quail!!!! Yes after many years of no small animals we once again have something small and cute living in the backyard. I have been learning from Monica how to care for them and then this fall I picked up hatching eggs from breeders in Colorado. That first 2 dozen were incubated and brooded by Monica with plans for them to move here asap once outside... That didn't happen as we didn't get cages built, and didn't get cages built, and still no cage even started. Not for lack of effort and planning on my part but rather Toli was like yes tomorrow but tomorrow never came. So when I brought home my first jumbo sized quail TWO WEEKS after the original pick up date Toli threw a fit. And got to work making HIS version of my plans. Nope not what I wanted but they will hold quail but the doors are too small and it makes tending them a royal PITA. But it was a double cage so now I had room for my lovely jumbo breeding unit and for the three ladies we had kept back from the first hatch plus their new boyfriend from the same breeder as my jumbo breeding unit. You can see that cage in the background of this photo.
And yes that is a second cage being built. It is a larger single cage to use as a grow out pen for future hatches as I now have an incubator and are hatching eggs to see what kind of pretty colors I can get. Any chicks that don't remain here have homes lined up already so I am having fun. Turns out these little birds come in sooo many different colors then the plain brown birds my jumbos are. AND I can get hatching eggs that should produce jumbo size birds in some of the fancy colors...
