My Whiskey Barrel is not quite full

Welcome to Adventures in Container Gardening! Narrated by your host Kristin.

OK, So I happen to live in a concrete jungle, contributing to the urban heat effect that manages to make this desert of ours even more unbearable come summer time. I live in a little apartment renovated from the back of a house. If you don't mind a little concrete, the courtyard is lovely. It is quiet and private (with the exception of my crazy neighbors- some of whom I think are a bit unhinged) and has little islands of garden with cacti, orange and grapefruit trees and other native plants decoratively bordering the easy upkeep concrete paving that dominates the space.

During the last couple of years, watching my friends ever more exciting back yard gardens and becoming increasingly impassioned about plants... my determination for a garden of my own has grown and grown (about the only thing that has).

I have had some spectacular failures, including attempted herbs and other plants both inside and out that just didn't make it. I do not have a green thumb. Some I have killed, I suspect, by over watering, some by under watering... some don't get enough sun and others I have fried by leaving them in the summer sun on my coffee table. So needless to say it has been a slow and frustrating process and all of it container bound.

Newly inspired by a gift of many pots and some flowers to plant by a dear friend who is moving, my concrete garden experiment has recently taken off. Now, instead of one or two dying plants I have about twenty in different stages of life or death--

With that brief background I introduce to you my newest challenge: Whiskey Barrel grown Bottle Gourd.

I bought this lovely little Bottle Gourd at the Tucson Organic Gardeners' sale last Sunday. It was an impulse buy, I had no previous desire for a bottle gourd plant. It was, you know, near the register. And of course I had no idea how to grow one.

So now, a few days later- I find my self with a large whiskey barrel (not false advertising- the sweet aroma of whiskey filled the air when I was drilling holes in the bottom) that I have been on repeated trips to find more dirt for... still not quite full.

To companion my gourd experiment I have planted some native seeds of a couple herbs advertised as similar to dill and marigold. In some nice Google-obtained theory these might keep bugs away from my theoretical gourds.

Feel free to take bets on gourd production, I am sure you will all be at the edge of your seats, like we were when waiting for Matt's chickens to start laying blue eggs.