CURING BLACK THUMB

My wife and I have wanted to grow tomatoes and herbs for years, but we either never had a place to do it, or failed miserably and killed everything off. This year, we have a little yard and we decided to give it a go again. Thanks to the generosity of my Aunt and my parents, we started off with a pretty good collection of plants, then we bought a few more plants and we were off and running.

My Aunt also told us about something called a "Global Bucket", which is supposed to be a foolproof way of growing plants in a self watering bucket system. Given our previous history of killing every plan we've ever owned, (except for a cactus, which just barely held on), we decided to build three global buckets as a backup in case all the plants in the ground died.

In the ground, we planted Zucchini, Poblano Peppers, Jalapenos, Nordello Peppers, Amish Paste Tomatoes, Four Strawberries, Chives, Cilantro, and Dill. 

In the buckets, we planted a Nordello Pepper and two Mortgage Lifters.

Peat Moss seemed to be the perfect addition to the soil in the ground. It made the dirt much fluffier, and just seemed right. 

Also, I have to come clean... when I was younger, my grandparents always had an incredible garden, which they attributed to buried fish heads.... Since I had some full lobster traps from last season, I buried a total of about 10 pounds of fish heads in four 2 foot deep holes. Contrary to our fears, there was absolutely no rotting stink and no crazed cats prowling in our garden. I think it was the right thing to do.

Here are some pictures:

The global bucket, ready for dirt... The plant is watered through the pipe, and water will be wicked up from a lower bucket through the green cup and into the upper bucket.

Here I am mixing the dirt for the buckets... We used about 70% Peat Moss, 20% Vermiculite, and 10% Perlite. We also added some dolomite, and a ring of organic fertilizer.

And here are the buckets as of today... The mortgage lifter is thriving... mysteriously, the other tomato plant is really struggling, and the Nordello pepper in the global bucket is actually quite a bit smaller than the one we planted in the ground, but doing well.

Here's about half of what we planted in the ground....

And we're already getting some nice green strawberries coming in...

We can't wait for the first harvest.... If nothing goes wrong, this could be the first time we ever get to eat a meal made from ingredients we grew ourselves!