In the past, I've halfheartedly thrown a few vegetable seedlings in our gardens, hoping for the best. Unsurprisingly, my "survival of the fittest" theory of gardening usually resulted in weeds, bugs, and animals proving they were the fittest. So I've never actually had any vegetables to harvest.
This year, I decided to make more of a concerted effort. I read a few basic gardening books. We decided to try out a square foot garden. While our new house has a beautiful yard, it's very wooded and our best sun comes in the front yard. Rather than digging out the yard to plant a traditional garden, we just added a 4' x 4' box. It was a fun project. The kids had a lot of fun with it. For the dividers, we bought a bunch of wood paints at the craft store and let them go wild.
Cute, huh?
So what have we got going here? Onions, lettuce, rainbow chard, fairy tale eggplant, grape tomatoes, sungold tomatoes, a carrot mix (yellow, purple, and orange--N-man's pick), lima beans (B-man's pick). I had transplanted some arugula as well that I'd started indoor from seeds, but it didn't make it. The transplanted lettuce didn't work out, either, so I bought some at the nursery that's growing much better.
I also wanted an herb garden. I had a
small herb garden at my last house that I loved, though it was fairly inconveniently located from the kitchen. We decided this year to put the herbs in planters on the back porch. Some of the smaller planters I'm planning to bring inside in the winter--fresh herbs all year, if it works out! Our porch is very near the kitchen, and already I find myself just popping out with a pair of scissors to harvest a few sprigs while I'm cooking. Wonderfully convenient!
This one is parsley, garlic chives, and amethyst basil (a favorite with N-man and B-man, not to mention TK and me!).
Next, we've got rosemary, chocolate mint, and chives. These are the planters I'm sure to bring in this winter.
In a big planter, I have sage, cilantro, basil, and lemon thyme. I'm worried this might be over-full, but if so, I'm sure I can use vast quantities of cilantro and basil if I need to thin this fast.
I had another planter so I threw in an extra fairy-tale eggplant and two lettuce plants. I'm going to harvest the lettuce very soon, before they grow much larger and start to crowd the eggplant. Yum, fresh baby lettuce, maybe this weekend!
My inlaws gave us a strawberry pot, so using my vast imagination, I planted it with...strawberries. We've gotten 5 yummy strawberries from it already, but mostly the strawberries are getting eaten by animals (chipmunks, I think. Do they eat strawberries?) I don't have much hope for this. I think we'll do flowers instead of strawberries next time.
Then in the last planter, I'm trying to start some herbs from seeds. There are lots of little sprouts, but I planted over a month ago and it's growing very slowly. It's a fun experiment, but I don't have hugely high hopes for this. It'll be neat to see what, if anything really comes up here.
So that's it. I tried not to go overboard since 1) we have a CSA subscription, and there are only so many vegetables even I can eat, and 2) I've never had much luck in the past with gardens, and there are ZILLIONS of wild animals around our house so I fear I'm just gardening for them :)
Do you have a garden? What are you growing this year?
In the blocks, we put ever-bearing strawberries and in the bed, there are shallots (left) and leeks (right). As for seeds, we sowed arugula, spinach, bunching onions and snap peas (also in the blocks, all the way to the right where there are no strawberries).
