Time for change in this container

This box has been doing really well on the balcony. Current contents are floragold basket and tiny tim tomatoes, freckles romaine (not very freckly), red oak leaf lettuce, some pathetic aphid infested fino verde basil and a single merigold my son brought home at the end of the school year.

The lettuce has served us well and now I think it's time for it to go. It keeps giving but you can tell it wants to go to seed. It's getting stalky. We just use it for sandwiches now. I go out and pick a handful of leaves every morning. But with the tomatoes getting bigger, things are getting crowded and I'd like to plant something else in the square foot of space this lettuce occupies.

I planted tomatoes on each side of the container and they are finally starting to set fruit. Only problem is I don't remember which is which. I'm pretty sure the plants on the right are floragold basket (yellow cherry) and the plants on the left must be tiny tim (red cherry). Both are small determinate plants and appear to be happy in the cramped bit of space I've given them. They'd likely be even happier if I uprooted the lettuce and basil.

Beans are climbing

The lettuce I planted in the spring is still providing. I keep threatening to pull it all up and make one last salad but it never happens. Lately we've been plucking a few leaves at a time for sandwiches, and tonight it was burgers. The lone beet at the back of the container provides a bit of cooling shade. Also starting to grow in there is some some fino verde basil and tiny tim and floragold tomato plants.

Using a couple of long bamboo poles I had on the balcony, I constructed something for the beans to climb. Each bean has its own cord to climb. I guess it's about 6 feet from the soil level to the top of the trellis. A bit higher would have been nice but I only had so much cord and didn't feel like buying more. Once the beans start twisting around their pole (or cord in my case) they shoot up fast and I figure a couple of these will reach the top by the end of next week. Some of the plants are a little late to the game and will take a little longer. But even with all the fast growth, it's going to be a while before I'm picking beans.

An early harvest

Before going away for a couple of weeks, my wife decided it was time to harvest all of the salad greens growing in this container. She's not particularly fond of arugula and I guess she wasn't crazy about the mizuna either which was probably a good thing because we had more than enough baby lettuce leaves for six people.

After a couple of weeks the lettuce in this container is growing again. I wasn't around to water it but I guess we got a bit of rain while we were away and the weather wasn't overly hot. The mizuna seemed to survive our absence as well and the arugula was starting to flower.