we have tried to grow things over the last 8 years or so with mixed results. always seem to get peppers and zucchini to grow no issue. Tomatoes grow but we seem to get small yields. tried potatoes but i must have done something wrong because i am pretty sure i got less useable potatoes then i started with seed potatoes lol.

best experience and most fun i have had was a few years ago we took our pumpkins and gourds from Halloween and just tossed them into the tree line for the animals to eat ( we live in a rural area and get lots of deer, rabbits, fox, and other small wildlife. the following year we had vines sprouting up all over the yard lol. i assume they were eaten and then pooped out the seeds. we had so many pumpkins and Gourds we were giving them to friends and neighbors and the vies were taking over. even took one and put it in a wooden crate to make a square pumpkin which was pretty cool.

we have tried this every year since and none have grown.

we have extremely black thumbs lol.

Drg. Potatoes and tomatoes take a lot of fertilizer.

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The biggest PIA using my grow bags for outdoor garden is the bags are fabric and made to allow the soil to breath and have good drainage (good thing) but that also means they require more watering to keep the soil from drying out since the breathable fabric is exposed to sun and wind from all sides.

Watering the plants was pretty much a daily or every other day thing depending on the weather keep the soil from drying out. So I did some searching on the inter webs to see how others deal with this.

Many folks use automatic drip irrigation systems so I looked into them. I ordered one of these automatic drip irrigation thingies off of Amazon to give it a try for the container garden this year.

https://tinyurl.com/ywd5xy2d

It looks like a neat thing and has positive reviews. You fill a bucket with water and drop the water sensor level thingy and the intake unit into the bucket, run some tubing to all the containers, hook up the tubing the solar powered control unit and set the timing and watering frequency. The soil will get watered automatically every day for your set time as long as there is water in the watering bucket.

Most of these small systems only cost about $30-$50 so I thought why not give it a try?

^ If you are growing in a hot dry climate, that is an option.
Being in a temperate Northern climate here with higher humidity and more rain I haven't had that issue with fabric grow bags drying out fast in between the regular watering and fertilizing routine.

Last year when I did the fabric grow bags I put them on a caddie thing with coaster wheels in case I wanted to move them. They were on a cement patio in full sun so probably extra warm from the cement absorbing and radiating the heat. Also my town is very hilly so wind the wind can kick up more than normal lowland areas so that is a factor. The soil would tend to need water within a couple of days.

I'll give the drip watering thing a shot. It's only like $30. If it turns out I don't need it, no biggie. What would be nice is if the system had a humidity sensor and would turn on or turn off based on the soil sensor.

Seeds prepped and started under grow lights.

226 plants total:

Chinese Giant sweet peppers x 10
California Wonder bell peppers x 10
Serrano pepper x 10
Giant Jalapeno peppers x 10
Tabasco pepper x 10
Sweet Tangerine Cherry tomato x 8
Better Boy tomato x 8
Mortgage Lifter tomato x 8
German Johnson (Lol) tomato x 8
Red Cherry tomato x 8
San Marzano tomato x 16
Orange Cherry tomato x 10
Zucchini x 12
Yellow Squash x 12
Eggplant x 12
Butternut squash x 8
Crimson Sweet watermelon x 6
Congo watermelon x 6
Straight 8 cucumber x 12
Cabbage x 12
Broccoli x 12
Cauliflower x 12

Direct sow (Mid May), not started indoors:

Blue Lake #47 green beans
1/2 Runner green beans
Corn, 2 kinds
Potatoes, 3 kinds
Onions, 2 kinds
Garlic
Lettuce
Carrots
Assorted herbs, no Maryjane, Jonesy

Took us about 8 hrs...6 of those hrs today.

It's a long season, and this is just the start of all the work.

Robert I’m gonna have to research these peppers. Maybe grow a couple of them to try out.

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Planted a green bell pepper plant next to a couple jalapeno plants once.. the bell pepper picked up some heat... very good bells that year... 😟

That's not possible unless some jalapeno pollen got into some bell pepper flowers and you collected seeds from a resulting ripe bell pepper and planted the seeds for the next crop.

Have you all tried growing your cucumbers on a fence? I usually stake a 4 foot fence along a row of cucumbers and help the vines to grow in the right direction then they climb right up keeping the cucumbers off the ground and easy to find and pick. Someone turned me on to that years ago and I do it every year. Works great!

Drafter I wonder if you got mexi bell peppers? They are exactly what you described and fantastic. It’s possible they mixed it up in the store.

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I rototilled my garden tonight. It’s cloudy but after a big rain this weekend coming it should be nice when I work it again before planting time. I will plant late April

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Started working on my raised bed today. It's roughly 16 feet x 8 feet and 2 cinder blocks high. Gonna dump a load of river silt Monday and cart it all to the back one wheelbarrow load at a time.

Could be. MexiBell is an F1 hybrid, a cross between some variety of sweet bell pepper and some variety of hot pepper.

Not sure but that could have happened... the wife collects seeds and does starters sometimes... I just figured since they grew up right next to each other they shared stuff...
kinda reminds me of this white guy I worked with in DC.. he grew up with black kids and he acted black... I reminded him he wasn't several times... 😟

It sounds like it was an unintentional F1 cross in the garden if she collected the seed from a ripe pepper in a previous growing season. It can happen sometimes. Bees can do that if they have some pollen stuck on them from one type of pepper and fly into a flower of a different variety of pepper and the pollen gets deposited on an unfertilized flower. I've had that happen on tomato plants too. Of course, you don't what you've got until you grow out the seed you collected and get fruit. II's recommended that you keep different varieties of pepper plants far apart to minimize unintentional crosses if you intend to collect seeds.
Pepper flowers are self-pollinating, they have both the male and the female reproductive organs in the same flower, so they don't need insect pollinators like bees to do the work. But chit happens.

Gonna try again just to see what happens... haven't planted bells in a couple years cause they were small and deformed.. but tasted good.. 😟

Sounds more and more like mexi bell peppers^. They don’t get as big as the regular bell. And they look goofy. But delicious

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Yep, hybrid seed created from 2 different types of peppers contains the genetics of both parents, so they are not likely to look exactly like either one. "goofy" is good as long as they taste good.

Started some pole beans and peas a couple weeks ago. Wet paper towels in a ziplock bag to get them to sprout. They sprouted just fine and last week put them in soil with peat moss pots. In one week they grew a grew about 10 inches (that's what she said). I just used regular potting soil and regular water to keep the soil moist. They are almost ready put in planters outside by now but it's still too cold to do so - seems like the damn things are on steroids.

I'll just have to do another round for the outdoor season. Meanwhile the cat will continue to snack on the sprouts. One thing that is odd... I did some catnip this past winter but my cat was not interested in it... Maybe he's an alien in cat clothing 🤔 .

Gonna start some herbs from seed this weekend. Chives, basil, oregano, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, thyme (it's on my side, yes it is).