My gardening experiment began again this spring. Joey and I, with the help of some tiny hands, put in countless hours hammering, churning soil, driving back and forth to the nursery, planting seeds, watering, fertilizing etc. I had great hope this year. But I learned my lesson after my square foot gardening hype (I won't go into the failure of that years garden but it was...a failure and even worse because I swore testimonials of the method to friends and family). So this year I determined to do nothing fancy. No heirloom varieties, no unique methods, no crazy soil combinations. Just the standard local recommendations in a raised box bed. We built five beds in the fall and filled one of them with three blueberry plants and another with three blackberry. Four of the six died through the winter. We were off to a good start. Luckily the online nursery we ordered from had a "guarantee on the box" (take that Callahan Auto;) and sent us some replacement plants.
Our garden continued in this vain when our lettuce and carrot seeds seemed never to germinate, our Broccoli and brussel sprouts got overheated and never produced any fruit and our green beans gave us maybe ten little beans. I realized I didn't fertilize early enough and pulled up the cool weather plants. About this time the lettuce and carrots finally began to sprout and my tomatoes were showing some promise. I guess this lightened the blow. Here are a few of our successes, and failures since that time:
The Swiss Chard has been prolific. We've been eating Swiss chard pasta, creamed swiss chard, chard on sandwiches...yummy! Pretty too! Aren't those raspberry pink stalks just gorgeous!
The herbs are coming along beautifully. Here's a picture of some chimichurri pesto that we ate with our steaks last night. It's my own little combination of two of my favorite condiments, chimichurri sauce and pesto. I used a little bit of all the herbs in my garden (okay, a lot of cilantro, basil and parsley) and some walnuts instead of pine nuts. I'm going to try it on a cold pasta salad tomorrow.
Zucchini and Yellow Squash
We've harvested maybe five of these...that's pretty sucky if you ask me.
The same with our strawberries, about five of them but man were they tiny, sweet and delicious!
The tomatoes are huge and bushy. I've been plucking off the "suckers" like crazy. We have tens of tiny little green babies all over them and are just drooling over them to ripen. We've eaten probably ten already. I can't believe I have to go back to store bought tomatoes in the winter;(
Don't forget the casualties.
I found these laying in the dirt yesterday, courtesy of Georgie. Man did she get in trouble. She was sent to bed early and is not allowed in the back yard all day today.
Sweet 100, our most prolific variety
So I return to my beginning statement. This is our gardening "experiment". I have to look at it that way or I'll go blue with disappointment. I just keep reminding myself that I'm learning something new each year that will make me the gardner I want to be in my 40's and 50's (although most of the time I have NO IDEA why things aren't working out). And I enjoy it. Even if I only get 15 fruits, it's worth it to me (any less than that is NOT). I love getting out there and getting my hands dirty, seeing the dirt pour off of my legs and arms in the shower and watching tiny little green sprouts that I planted emerge from the dirt. They're so hopeful. Gardening is hopeful. It's new and exciting. Every day you find something new in the garden. And if that ain't worth it, I don't know what is! And If I'm still writing posts similar to this in the summer of 2035 than just send me comment reminding me to keep my day job and, most importantly, to keep my black thumb out of YOUR garden!
