An update...

On Monday the storm broke one in half as I stated above. Sad but true. On Saturday morning my cell phone was beeping, my weather update warned me at 4am high wind warning. OK, whatever. I get up, do my day, and yesterday evening looked at the tomato next to the one that was half there, all wilted. It had been broken completely off during that wind storm. GONE!! I broke it off the rest of the way and buried the end in some wet potting soil hoping for some magic roots, but wow, 2 broken off in a week. Not a good year for me in the tomato world.

Looking at the positive side, I got some pictures of what we have now. Like I said, the tomatoes are spindly like they are searching for light. The cucumbers and squash out of the top are progressing, about to look for something to climb on.

Speaking of running, I decided that the climbers need something to climb on. In one of my previous incarnations, I had some commercial display grid 2 foot by 5 foot. I bought a few strong lag screws and hung them up. This will give the plants a place to run until they can safely reach the ground (should they need to run more).

Then, I briefly mentioned the new fence. I thought you would like some pictures of that. I am especially proud of the gate closing mechanism which on the benefit of geometry and an old door spring in the right place, closes automatically or if opened past perpendicular to the fence, stays open. It worked out much better than I expected.

Since I am drifting way off subject, I had some entries earlier this year about putting in a lilac bed. How about a couple of status pictures on that? Sure, why not.

That's my status and I'm sticking to it. Continue to enjoy your growing season.

_|I/V\ C.

This is a close up of the current batch of mushrooms. There have been 2 other crops of 2 other different species, and a couple of patches of a mold type thing that changed the color of the soil. That washed off with the watering.

Now I know that everyone says ignore the shrooms, it is a good sign the bale is converting properly. Fine, I get it. But 4 different 'crops', all of different variety? Whatever.

On the bad side, and possibly contributing to the shroom explosion, the spot I picked to put the bales is a but shady, maybe too shady. The carrots and beets are not going to get anywhere. A couple of Tomatoes look good, others not so much. The potatoes are starting good and strong, those will be interesting to see how they work out. I'll have to add potting soil in order to 'Hill' them I guess.

Well that's the update for now. Good luck and water that straw bale!

_+I/V\.

It is not lost hope, but it is not looking good.

Thanks for sharing your information about building and growing the upside down tomato plants. This is a first attempt for me and I thought I would share some photos. I live in a apartment so I don't have space to grow in a conventional method. At first I thought I would hang the tomatoes from the patio over top of my ground floor concrete porch, I decided against that concerned about adding a 80-100 pound load to my neighbors patio. So I built a pressure treated lumber hanging stand next to my porch. It only required one attachment to the building. Concerned about watering, I also ran some 3/8 plastic tubing up the structure to water the plants from a garden hose using a hose cut off from WalMart to control the flow. I'm thinking about adding a five gallon bucket with a submerged fountain pump to water and fertilize the plants and eliminate the garden hose.

After reading a bit more, I believe in an article by Jim at another site. He had mentioned that the metal handles on my plastic buckets would more than likely fail after the plastic bucket cooked in the sun for a while. I needed a back up plan. Sure enough after examining the bucket, the holes where the metal handle attached to the bucket seemed to be stressed. To set my mind at ease, and avoid seeing my tomatoes hit the dirt when I was watering one day with the plants heavy with fruit. I came up with this solution. I have included some construction drawings and tips for anybody that may have similar concerns. My buckets have a rim around them about 3 inches from the top of the bucket. The rim seemed to be pretty substantial so I made the rig shown in the attached image to hold the bucket. My bucket fit snugly in a 11 1/2 inch hole. If your bucket has such a rim you can cut your hole for the bucket to rest in. You can measure the size your cut-out hole needs to be by measuring the circumference below the rim with a cloth or plastic measuring tape like those used for sewing or do like I did and wrap a non stretching wire or something around the bucket below the rim then measure the length of the wire, divide the length of the wire or the length measured with the tape by 3.14, that will give you the diameter your hole needs to be. (I recall that from school about a century ago.) I painted the bucket holders I made with plywood so the weather would not effect them. I adjusted the cords by spreading them out and using a nail-in romex staple this relieved about half the weight of the planter from the metal bucket handles.

Jim C feel to post my pics and post on your site, I look at you guys as the people that are promoting the free enlightenment of what you can do when you put your mind into it. So here is my Proposed water and plant feeding system. I may add this later. If it works I'm going to set up a system for my Mom next year for Mothers Day. She's 86, doesn't have a hose hook up, but does have a electric outlet on her patio. She's capable of filling up the water bucket with a 1/2 gallon pitcher which she could fill up from her kitchen sink.

Pretty cool stuff, huh? There's lots more cool stuff on Todd's message board and website (http://bit.ly/aCsdbS) and on my blog here about similar feats of engineering. Check them out!

_|I/V\ C.

The tops of the pails look really good. Lots of cucumbers, zucchini, summer, and acorn squash plants are around 6 inches long and peeking over the top of the planters. I took these pictures at dusk, so they are a bit grainy and the porch light was on interfering, but I wanted to share anyway.

In the other upright planters, I lost 1 pepper plant, and none of the green peppers are worth a thing. I hope to find some well developed green pepper plants this weekend and maybe get something out of those. The peas and radishes are big. I'll have to take a closer look to make sure they are thinned properly so I get some crop out of them.

Nothing else of interest happening in my front yard, so until there is or until the next progress pictures, thanks for reading.

The 2 tomato plants that I planted from seed look good. Those are the second planting. I have 3 bean plants that the squirrel didn't find the first time. I have since planted a handful more planted around the edges that are just starting to pop.

I wasn't sure how long the potatoes should have take to pop out, but when I found that the extra seed potatoes in the bag were starting to sprout, but nothing on the bale, I concluded that the squirrel got the first ones. So,today, I planted 3 new ones. I was surprised when I dug under the compost how much the straw underneath wad turning and working. Nice and warm as well. All I did to condition these bales was apply some water soluble fertilizer once on the first watering, then watered them every day for about a week, and dropped on the compost and planted. Seems to be working just fine.

I definitely question the massive doses of fertilizer recommended by others. I think the top 3 inches of cheap compost worked just as well.

So, I brought them home, got them planted and they sat while I took a couple of days out of town for a wedding. I got back from Nebraska Sunday night, so Monday I flipped them up and took the pictures.

In the tops of the planters I planted cucumbers, zucchini squash, summer squash, and acorn squash. I think there is going to be a lot of vines on the front of my house. I may need a machete...

In the planters, the eggplant and the okra were also gone. I replanted the okra. and planted kohlrabi where the egg plant was. They are doing fine. The radishes and the peas are doing fine. They must be more cold tolerant.

So, that's the catch up. As you can see I am splitting up blogging on my straw bale adventures and my upside down pail adventures. If you want to read them both go to my main blog page, they will all be there.

Thanks for reading.