Here is the first page of the basic gardening notes from last year. I keep a written diary of what was planted and where. I also tried to keep some notes on how things went (not too much there). A diary is a great thing as you can record notes on what you did, when, and how things turned out. It allows you to remember how you did things and where things are. It does not need to be a complex thing. My book is just a simpled book, just remember to use pencil. If the book gets wet ink tends to run, but, graphite does not!










In total I had 32 containers of varying sizes throughout the back yard area. The yard itself faces south. The north side is our townhouse. To the east and west we have fences about 2.1 metres (7 feet) high. The south side fence is about 1.2 metres (4 feet) high. The base of the yard itself is approximately 45 cm (18 inches) of stonedust topped with large concrete pavers.

There are two bonuses with the yard layout

1. The direction effectively extends our gardening by about 2 months (Beginning of May to end of October) before we really have to worry about killer frosts.
2. The stonedust and concrete pavers really retain the heat and keeps the yard warm at night.
   

The only thing you have to worry about using pots is keeping the pots moist during the hot summer days. Usually we need to water twice a day, sometimes three times. If you are growing plants like tomatoes a minimum is three times a day. Once a week we fertilize each container using Miracle Grow. This is needed as the containers are small and the watering does flush out nutrients from our soil mix.

The soil mix is not a standard mix. Over the years we were using black earth, but, found it too heavy (especially for the pots on the fences). Last year we tried about 1/3 black earth and 2/3 peat moss and found that it was light weight, retained a fair amount of water and was light enough to be easily moved.

Over the next set of postings I will describe each pot and how they turned out.