We harvested potatoes today, and I posted some pics and commentary on the blog! In a word, they were awesome! emgardener, Our porch faces west, so the the plants get direct sun from about 11am until 7 or 8pm. I have heard that the morning sun is the "good sun" but unfortunately the house blocks most of the morning sun. The average temperature is a bit tricky to say. The porches in the city here are almost all built on top of lower sunrooms, and the floor of the porches is tarred to keep the lower roof from leaking. This makes the floor quite hot, but luckily we have a rug that mitigates this somewhat. If you were to stand on the porch barefoot in the summer without the rug it would burn your feet. It is also quite windy most of the time, which helps with the heat a bit. I would say the average temperature is somewhere around 80-85 degrees on most summer days. If it's 75 outside, it's probably a touch over 80 on the porch if it's sunny. My plants haven't wilted much in the heat. I think that using somewhat larger containers has helped with this. Most of my veggies are in at least 7 gallon pots, and the tomatoes are mostly in 11.4 gallon pots. I water about every other day when it doesn't rain, and it seems to work out well so far. The soil mix I'm using is the Sta Green potting mix sold at Lowes. I chose it largely because it was so lightweight compared to some others (since we are on an upstairs porch). I bought some moisture control and some normal. The moisture control stays damp very well, but I unfortunately planted the okra of all things in that pot (and it liked to be a little dry). I think that's why it has taken so long to really get going. Mike, Thanks for the heads up on the broccolini. We love broccoli but it's just not worth the space it takes on the porch. We had thought about broccolini, but I was a little hesitant because I wasn't sure what the yield would be. It sounds like a good thing to try. Here is a link that might be useful: The Potato Harvest! (on the blog)

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Wow! Those look great. It's so nice to see those healthy virus-free leaves and the flowers are awesome! I have cannova rose here for the last three years and it's a great grower and bloomer. I even tried starting a few of the seeds this spring and they're already sending up second and third bloom stalks.