How Does Your Garden Grow? {Our Swimming Pool Garden 6 Week Update}

Back at the end of May, I shared a little project with you that the kids and I were working on this summer- a swimming pool garden. You can read the full story here. Basically, we took an old kiddie pool that  the kids had outgrown, drilled some holes in the bottom and made it into a little container garden. I said I'd update on the progress, so now that we are about 6 weeks out, here's a little glimpse of our garden now:

As you can say, things are definitely growing!!! Right now, we have tomatoes and zucchini actively with fruit coming. Our eggplant is still growing wonderfully but no produce just yet! We started with these 3, plus lettuce, peas and squash. So, here's the update:

• The lettuce grew wonderfully at first, and then kind of hit a standstill. These were in a separate smaller container so I question if perhaps my container just wasn't large enough. We had a few days of extreme heat and despite watering several times a day, what little plant was there seemed to have gotten scorched. We will try again next year! 
• Our squash plants had just the slightest bit of growth when we transferred them over and just never took off beyond that. These may have been older seeds that we took a chance on, I'm not 100% certain. 
• The peas were definitely older seeds- 2 years old and technically expired. We've read various things on whether or not they were still usable but we took the chance. They did produce a small plant, which seems to still be alive at least, but hasn't grown much beyond that. We keep watering and watching, but I think these were just too old to be fruitful. 
• We actually have two tomato plants that we have growing. One was in the pool, the other in a separate container. The pool tomatoes have grown like crazy! I was actually shocked at just how large they've gotten. When we'd had tomatoes before, they didn't get very large at all, so I was anticipating that...with the better soil, they have really taken off. We really could have have a pool dedicated solely to tomatoes I think...which is my plan for next year! The separate plant has grown well and has fruit coming as well, but not nearly as much as the one in the pool has. Again, I think perhaps a larger container would have been a bit better, but it's certainly doing well too!
• Our eggplant has grown greatly and has blooms on it, but no eggplants yet. I'm looking forward to seeing those continue to grow.
• Our zucchini has also flourished and again grown larger than I could have expected! It seems these will be ready to eat before long at all! I cannot wait!

Overall, I've been really thrilled with it. We've definitely learned a few lessons on what to do next year, but we will definitely be continuing on with more pools and more experience!!

Have you tried starting a swimming pool garden? How has your experience been so far?