Happy Saturday!

This week, I returned to work post-travels. It was not easy as part of my brain still felt like it was away. I think it was probably Thursday or Friday when my head was in the game again but then it’s time again for the weekend. Oh well.

After returning home last Friday, I haven’t stopped working in the garden. I felt like the tasks were never ending. There were seedlings needing to transplant, plants needing water, weeds needing to be pulled from between the rocks, etc. Then there was a sustaining 20 mile/hour wind with frequent 30 mile/hour gusts and 15% humidity causing the soil to dry out at record speed, despite adding water storing crystals and mulch. The weather forecast kept saying the wind will die in a few hours but it just kept going day after day. I think the same thing happened at the end of May last year, too, but not for this many days. This is non-stop for 4 days.

I’m not sure whether I should even share photos of the garden right now. Everything look so dried out and not lively. Anyway, here are two of my favorite Greenstalk towers right now. I have a total of 4 towers but these are the ones that are looking the best right now.

I have been planting in these towers more and more lately, especially with vegetable transplants. As much as I love planting vegetables in ground and in raised beds, it seems like as we enter summer, those transplants often get eaten overnight. I find this sort of thing doesn’t happen as often in these towers.

The pink tower is in the back garden and it’s the newest tower in the garden. I got it at the end of last year and I’ve been keeping it against the house because that’s the shadiest spot. If I want to have green vegetables in the summer months, it must be in the shade. I think of the years I’ve been planting in a Greenstalk, this is the most full I’ve ever had it. Every pocket has something in it and you can see in the third tier, to the left of the yellow marigold, is the newest addition – dwarf Siberian kale. This is a new variety of kale I’m trying this year.

The terra cotta Greenstalk is one of my strawberry towers and it’s one of the oldest towers in the garden. If I’m not mistaken, I got it summer of 2022. Most of the pocket has a strawberry plant and even after 4 years, I’m still trying to fill this thing full of strawberries. I used to plant other things in this tower but not this year. This year, my goal is to fill every pocket with a strawberry plant.

This tower has been suprisingly productive this year with strawberries. I have been harvesting more strawberries from this tower than from the raised bed and the strawberry tower in the back garden. Right now, some of the plants in this tower are in propogation mode while some are in fruit mode. I like to keep them in one mode at a time. “You can’t be busting out fruit and sending out runners at the same time.” I like to say to my strawberry plants, “One thing at a time.”

You probably can’t see but I have little green cups clipped to the side of the pockets for strawberry propogations. Those little cups are filled with just enough soil to root a strawberry runner. Hopefully, soon, I will have more strawberry plants.

I appreciate you stopping by and I appreciate Natalie for hosting Weekend Coffee Share and I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.