Thanks guys. Looking forward to your 2nd round Aaron!
So I thought I'd do sort of a 'mid year' recap of my garden...
We've had some pretty tough weather here in Dallas, first with near freezing overnight temps back in April then a few weeks later daytime temps in the 100's. Crazy. We've had pretty hot weather all summer with this weekend hovering near 110°.
Overall I'm pretty happy, although the tomato production was lack luster and from an input perspective, not really worth it. But one can't quantify the learning experience and satisfaction from gardening in general.
The Peppers (Serrano and Ghost) were a surprise with both plants getting absolutely huge. The Serrano is now nearly 6ft tall and more of a small tree, the Ghost is more bushy but about 42" across and is invading a good part of my raised bed, even with pruning about a third out of both. 24"-36" my foot! (thats what the little markers that came with both indicated as max height/width). Production on the Serrano has been impressive but the Ghost has only flowers at this point, save for one pepper so far.
Early in the year I had a leafhopper and whitefly infestation and later my mint patch got hit with mealy bugs. I was really happy with the way neem oil/soap spray knocked both pests down in pretty short order. Other than that, I haven't had any other pest issues.
I haven't had any disease issues either aside from one Tomato plant getting late blight. It does look like I may be losing the blight battle on the other two however, but the truth is I've gotten a bit lazy with the copper spray the last couple of weeks.
Overall my garden seems healthy and relatively happy (the heat) so we'll see how the rest of the year goes. I'm hoping that once cooler weather sets in the plants will start producing much more fruit. Hopefully I can keep my remaining tomatoes going to see that point.
I'm ordering some grow bags this week and plan on setting a couple more tomato plants out in mid Aug. I'm getting 10ga bags for the tomatoes, and maybe some 5ga for plants like basil, etc... Also, I learned that 'trade gallons' used in nursery lingo is not the same as regular gallons. For instance, a 5ga nursery pot equates to about 3.5 'regular/normal' gallons. Learn something new all the time!
Cheers!
Thanks for the recap BT, great to see, hear what others are doing elsewhere, successes, failures what works and doesn't, how different the growing environment is and the challenges faced. Always much to learn.
I'm guessing the pot volume is just calculated using diameter and height without taking into account the taper, or are bag volumes exaggerated s well?
dave