This is sort of kind of a sequel to the “The Bunny Solution” post from last week. Honestly, I’m a Star Wars geek and I thought the title was clever. The bunnies themselves never really did any damage to my raised planters. It was me. All me. I admit it. But I need someone or something to blame, okay? And I’m going to keep blaming the bunnies.
Last year was really my first experience with container gardening on a larger scale. I’ve grown things in 5 gallon buckets and experimented with straw-bale gardening, but they were never part of my “main garden”. I was probably a little arrogant and didn’t do enough research about the watering needs for planters vs. in-ground gardens. Long story short, I over watered. By alot. Even though they were kind of poorly built, these planters retained water really well. In ground gardens are much more forgiving when it comes to over watering. I’m not an expert, but my educated guess is that the water has way more places to disperse in the ground and the roots don’t get soaked.
It wasn’t until later in the season that I realized my mistake. Darned near everything that I planted was stunted. Eventually, I dialed the watering in and my plants did end up looking much healthier. My tomatoes did fruit, but they were nowhere near as vigorous as past years.
I’m not here to pretend like I’m some kind of expert. My hope is that a few people might read this and learn from my mistakes so they don’t have to make the same errors that I did.