After some disappointing results growing vegetables in containers the past couple of years (as usual, it worked much better when I first tried it), I wasn’t going to do any container gardening this year. Thanks in part to the Covid-19 pandemic, I changed my mind and decided to try growing different vegetables in containers.
I used two parts of my homemade soil mix (peat moss, commercial topsoil, perlite, dried cow manure) left over from 2019 and one part soil from one of my garden beds. I also added some lime and slow release fertilizer.
I planted daikon ‘April cross’ (Japanese radish) in two buckets. I have trouble growing large, long daikon roots in my garden, presumably because of the heavy, clay soil. I thought the lighter soil mixture in the containers would help. I planted six seeds in each bucket; only one seed didn’t germinate.
In the third bucket, I planted four summer squash ‘green tiger zucchini’, which didn’t work well when I tried this two years ago. I’m hoping the different soil mix will bring success.
daikon ‘April cross’ and summer squash ‘green tiger zucchini’ growing in buckets
I’m also growing the same variety of summer squash in a garden bed. Those plants are a little larger than the squash growing in the bucket. The difference could be partly because I started those seeds earlier and the plants were a little larger when I transplanted them.
We’ve already harvested a few tiny (about 1 by 5 cm) zucchini from both the squash plants growing in the garden and those growing in the bucket. I pick summer squash when the attached flower withers or falls off. As the plants mature, they should produce larger fruit.
I can just see the tops of some of the daikon roots; as they are only 1.5 cm across or so, they have to grow quite a bit before I will harvest them.
Related posts:
- Container Vegetables
- Container Vegetables Part 2
- Containers for Growing Vegetables
- Daikon
- Root Crops & Herbs: Preparing for Winter (daikon)
- Huge Seed Leaves (zucchini)
Update June 27th: Three of the daikon growing in the bucket on the left in the photo made flower stalks, so I pulled them. If they start to make flowers, root crops usually become tough and inedible. Two of the three may be usable, but one definitely isn’t.
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