We’re not farmers and don’t pretend to be.  We can keep tropical plants alive (outdoors) and have had gardens before.  The last time we tried to grown vegetables was in Hernando MS the year before we moved here to Siesta Key.  We had bird feeders and grew (unplanned) beautiful and huge sunflowers.  So, I thought, why not something else.  I planted pumpkins on the southwest side of the house.  There was a faucet nearby for watering and plenty of sunlight.  The vines grew long.  We watched daily as they grew, constantly turning them back toward the house or along side the house to the back yard.  We didn’t have huge fruit or very much, but we had some and we had a lot of fun.

Before that, in Myrtle Beach where the soil was all sand (like it is here), we had several huge containers on the back patio (southwest facing).  We grew tomatoes, potatoes, herbs, carrots.  The only thing I remember eating were the cherry tomatoes.  But it wasn’t an easy task (container farming) and we didn’t do it again.

Here on Siesta Key, we’re trying the container garden again.  This time with smaller pots, which I think will help them stay watered.  I bought a “self-watering pot”.  It has a reservior at the bottom and I can see the water level.  I asked around to my 4H friends what would be the easiest of the expensive vegetables to grow.  Hands down, broccoli won.  So that’s what we planted today. 

My husband and I already grow basil, mint and rosemary.  He’s in charge of those plants.  We talked about what else to grow.  Perhaps we’ll try tomatoes again using this reservoir pot that our broccoli is in.  I looked up “how to grow broccoli” and “how to grow tomatoes” on the internet.  For simple advice I went to www.ehow.com.  I looked further into growing tomatoes and found a site explaining that you should have very little leaves on your tomato plants in order for the plant to produce an abundant crop.  Sounds like a science experiment to me, so we’ll try one plant with leaves and one without.  I don’t have a hypothesis so we’ll just see what happens.  Hopefully either way, we’ll end up with lots of tomatoes for salads, guacamole, and all those other things you put tomatoes in.  Yum.