Grow a Deck-Pot Vegetable Garden
Our neighborhood backs to a state park, so we have all the usual plant-eating critters in our yard at night. I buy deer-deterrent everything for my flower beds, but I haven’t found many veggies they won’t eat. And even if they don’t show up one night, the rabbits do. So for the second year in a row, I set up my own Deck Pot Vegetable Garden this spring.
Now last year, I grew tomatoes. It turns out squirrels like them every bit as much as I do, though, so every morning I would find that the ripe ones had munch marks. Ugh.
And I can’t think of a good way to eliminate them since our deck sits right beneath a bunch of oak trees.
But I still wanted to try again with some kind of vegetables this year since Fred and I are trying to eat more of those. And my sister had some spare plants from her own garden. So this year, I skipped the tomatoes and planted banana peppers and carrots instead (take THAT furry beasts! I found food that grows underground!).
It’s gone much better. All my plants started as 2-inch tiny shoots. I lost one of my six peppers, but the others grew noticeably within a week:
It’s been a month and a half since then, and look!
My pepper plants are laden with peppers, and there will be many more to come. Every blossom with eventually fall and a pepper will grow in its place.
Meanwhile my carrot tops are so tall they can’t even stand up straight anymore.
Reinvigorated from this new success, I’m already planning on adding some more veggies to my pot-collection next year. I may still have to buy my tomatoes at the store, but I can grow the REST of my salad fixin’s right outside the kitchen door.
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5 Responses to Grow a Deck-Pot Vegetable Garden
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September 3rd, 2009 12:06 pm
Kim,
You can keep planting veggies in your deck garden through September and October, and harvest a second crop through early November in Maryland. If your carrots are ready for harvest, you can select onother vegetable to try in their pots as soon as you are ready. It is fun to grow your own food…makes all the care and watering worth it!
September 3rd, 2009 4:40 pm
I put bird netting on my tomatoes to keep all those pesky squirrels and birds away from my tomatoes. I wait until I have small green tomatoes and then cover the plants with the netting. You have to adjust the netting as the plants keep growing.
September 3rd, 2009 7:43 pm
Thanks for the tips!
September 3rd, 2009 9:11 pm
The problem we’ve had with pots on the deck is moisture getting trapped, and decaying the deck more rapidly than the rest of it. Have you had that problem at all?
September 24th, 2009 2:31 pm
We haven’t had that problem yet, but thanks for mentioning it, so I can move my pots around to different locations and hopefully avoid it altogether!