Last year I bought three Earthboxes* for my otherwise largely unused deck.  The result was a wonderful bounty of lettuce and arugula (as shown above), a smattering of tomatoes, a few herbs and a little disappointment with strawberries and peas.  You can read more about it all here.

This year, I bought three varieties of greens, some French breakfast radishes which apparently grow best mixed in with other stuff, and some beets and rainbow chard just for something different, what the heck.  I dug out last year’s fertilizer, topped off the boxes with some new potting mix and fertilizer, and just managed (with the help of an eager 7-year-old) to plant everythng as the rain started falling, a good excuse to clean up tomorrow.  Here’s what’s we planted:

* So what’s an Earthbox?  It’s a container that’s extremely efficient about using water, having a reservoir underneath and a cover on top.  So it basically makes for excellent, idiot-proof container gardening with a very high yield for the space.  My first Sky Full of Bacon features Bruce F., who has over 30 do-it-yourself Earthbox-like containers on his roof in Wicker Park.  If you haven’t seen it, check it out:

Sky Full of Bacon 01: How Local Can You Go? from Michael Gebert on Vimeo.