Rick's Garden Update 6-22-14

[ricman]

A few shots from the garden...Big Beef, Tycoon, Better Boy and enjoying the fruits of my labor.

[KarenO]

wow, beautiful garden and sandwich nice work!
KarenO

[Virtex]

I see Walmart bags and gutters...looks like it is working really well for you.

Nice work

[Tania]

lovely sandwich!

[JamesL]

Garden looks great! So does the BLT....
Not enough bacon....

[kath]

Oh, yum- way to go!

[BucksCountyGirl]

Plants looks great and I am very jealous of that fabulous looking BLT!

[LMinAL]

Beautiful! I'm still a week or two away from that sandwich. Looks delicious!

[Barb_FL]

Amazing!!!! Your garden looks great (sandwich too).

In the first pic (the one that you are standing), are your tomatos in buckets? If so, they are huge. I only ask b/c of the other shots showing the blue buckets. And are those the 5 gallon pail type buckets? If so, I am in awe.

[ricman]

Thanks everyone for the kind comments.

Barb..Thats my son in the picture, he is 19 years old and freshman in college. To answer your question all of my tomato plants are in the blue walmart bags and they hold about 5 gallons of soil mix.

Rick

[debbym]

Very nice. Love the sandwich.

[Barb_FL]

Hey Rick,

I'm really interested in your set up.

Do I have this correct? Using the walmart cloth bags, sitting on rain gutters for water?. Is your medium is peat based? And do you just let the cloth touch the water for wicking (or net pots/equivalents). It looks like you have brown drippers too. Finally, what are you feeding the plants.

They look so healthy. By the time mine have decent size fruit on them, they look pretty bad. The exception is I still have a marglobe plant that looks good (in an earthbox) even though it's done producing fruit.

It looks like you have a ton of plants.

Thanks,
Barb

[luigiwu]

Barb, go to youtube land and look at Larry Hall's Rain Gutter Grow System videos!

Rick, Go RGGS! GO! That's so awesome!!! You should also post this on the RGGS facebook group page - pple will go NUTS over your pics! Do you prune to just a couple of stems or how you decide how to support since you are using the baler twine?

[ricman]

Hello Barb,

Yes Wal-Mart reusable shopping bags fitted with a net cup(no drippers) in the bottom of the bag. The net cup sits into the rain gutter that is filled with water and wicks the water up. I use a regular potting mix(stagreen) and compost mixed about 60/40.I trellis the plants to grow up the orange twine in the pictures. If you have a chance check out Larry Hall's rain gutter grow system on youtube, he has a bunch of videos... a good one to watch-How To Build A Self Watering Rain Gutter Grow System.

Luigiwu...Yes on some plants I prune to 3 or 4 stems but when they get taller I usually just let them go. I like the shade that's provided when the weather really starts heating up.

Rick

[Redbaron]

Way ahead of me!