Journal August 29, 2015 - Planning ahead

All of the olive trees need to be pruned and repotted into larger containers, so today I mixed another batch of my homemade media.  Thinking ahead to next spring, I recently purchased enough supplies to mix enough media to get started gardening next spring.  As I start earlier than the average gardener, I find that the garden centers do not have the supplies I need out when I need them in early spring.

Mixing one large batch of media in the wheelbarrow is actually easier than mixing a small batch in a tub.  My thinking was: as long as I had all of the supplies out, I may just as well mix enough to make it worthwhile. 

As I needed at least fifteen 3 gallon nursery containers for the olives, I looked first to eBay rather than driving twenty or more miles to the local greenhouse supplier.  I found what I thought was a good deal on eBay, but I should have done some more online shopping, as I found the same nursery containers available from Home Depot.  They had to be ordered online and delivered to the local store for pickup, however, the cost was half the cost of the containers on eBay.  So, not to pass up a good deal I ordered from Home Depot also.  We have a nice deck that we seldom use, so I intend to use the excess containers to grow vegetables on the deck next season.

Little by little I am pecking away at repotting and pruning the olive trees.  The Picholine above is kind of what I am trying to achieve.  When I repot the trees I remove about an inch off the root system all the way around, filling the gap with fresh media; this is basically the same method used to control the size of bonsai.