Winter Tomatoes and Cucumbers

I'm so excited! I don't miss the moldy basement, the crumbling plaster or the impossibility of heating or cooling the old monstrosity of a farm house that was the family home, but there are a lot of things I do miss. The big south window is one of those things. When the kids were growing up, I used to plant tomatoes and cucumbers in five gallon buckets in August and bring them in just before the first frost. From there on, the kids and I played "bee" with q-tips to pollinate the flowers and we would have tomatoes and cucumbers all winter long. If you've been reading this blog for very long, you know that my farmer has a big south window. Today I made myself a trash can planter that I can move inside this winter. Here's the pictures:

A few years back, a fellow farmer's market vendor had some trash cans that she wanted to sell for $1 each. Not being able to resist such a bargain, I brought them home. Grampa Tom said "WHAT are you going to do with those?" He has no imagination! They hold trash, and flour and all sorts of stuff you don't want mice in! And now this one is becoming a window level planter for the winter. It has wheels so it will be fairly easy to get it into the house come winter.

I didn't want to spend big time bucks for enough potting soil to fill it so I took some ideas from straw bale gardening, ( http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/straw-bale-gardening.html ) my mailman's method of creating compost, and my own experience to create a growing medium that I think will work. (I cook like that too. Grampa Tom complains that you never know what I'll come up with!) 

Ingredients:

straw

manure from our pile.

some old plastic potato sacks.

and enough rocks, bricks and broken pottery to cover the bottom of the trash can.

First I created a place for water to drain to by covering the rocks and broken pottery with the old potato sacks. This will help keep the dirt from filling in the cracks between the material in my drainage area.

Then I layered it with manure

and straw

and manure

and straw

and manure

more straw

Then just for good measure, I topped it with a thick layer of Miracle Grow potting soil.

Then I filled my 2 gallon watering can

and poured it in the trash can.

I put the top on the trash can so nature can do it's magic. I hope it is done composting in the next month to 6 weeks.

Really should have prepared my planter at least a month ago, but since I just now got all this figured out, I decided to plant my seed in some growing pots for right now. I really should find some sort of tomato plant that is bred for container gardening, but I really like those Cherokee Purple tomatoes so I'm going for it. I did have some bush cucumbers. I planted these outside this summer and they do have a bit of a vine on them, but it ought to work.  I plan to put a tomato plant on one side and a cucumber plant on the other side. I will have to figure out some sort of trellising system., but I've got a while before I have to worry about that.

Will keep you posted as things develop!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue