Container gardening

Our place here in Hill Country is situated pretty much on rock - if it isn't rock, it's caliche clay, which is like glue when wet and like rock when dry. In other words, this is not a gardener's paradise, at least as far as soil quality goes. So, I thought since we are only here for a short time I'd put together a couple of little container gardens that we can move to Kendra's house when we leave. We'll see how that plan works.

In the meantime I'm harvesting Swiss chard and herbs, and now, a few weeks after I planted them, the tomato plants each have several fruit set on. So far the grasshoppers are ignoring them. The little beasts do seem to like marigolds however. The marigolds I planted around the edges, hoping for nice bright color for the wedding, have gotten smaller every day, some disappearing totally overnight. There are also large chunks out of the morning glory leaves, and I suspect grasshoppers in both cases. I've found large caterpillars on the wild grape ivy, but none on these two plants. Here are the pots as they looked a week ago, so they're even more filled out now.
There are morning glories in each planter that are now twining up on the porch railings, and hollyhocks creeping over the front edges. The planters are just storage tubs with drainage holes drilled in the bottom. I feed weak liquid fertilizer at least once a week so the plants are really taking advantage of the warm days and growing quickly.