Our Booming Garden

This is the first time we've ever had a garden, and since it is all experimental and very exciting for us, we've been documenting the whole thing. Although we don't really know what we are doing, we are having SO MUCH FUN! I can't believe the success we've had so far. Here are the photos of the progression of our little garden.

In order to prepare our garden, Casey had to use a sledge hammer to break apart a large concrete pad that was used for a dog kennel. I have many pictures of Casey without his shirt, muscles rippling and the sun beating down on his finely tuned body as he hefted the hammer above his head and broke apart the pad with his sheer brute strength. He, however, only allowed me to take those pictures on the condition that I will not put them on the blog. I'm considering using those pictures on a calendar to hang in our bedroom instead. ;) At any rate, preparing the garden took a lot of work. We had to dig up a large wooden trellis and demolish a hugely overgrown lilac bush together. We also spent many hours pulling garbage out of the dirt. It was really quite disgusting.

We borrowed a rototiller from our friends, the Torontos, and used it to level the ground and turn over the garden bed. I don't think we could have been successful doing it without the tiller. It was so much work to do by hand I think we might have just given up!

Our first plants were our peas. we started a few of them indoors, only to find out later that you're not supposed to do that for peas. Oops. After transplanting our seedlings, they got quite sick, wilted, and looked absolutely dead. Then, out of no where, one day they just popped back up like nothing had happened and they've been doing just great! I guess we got lucky in spite of our stupidity. Anyway, we planted one row of "early peas" and used sticks as a climbing trellis. Then we planted two rows of sugar snap peas. The package said that no supports were needed, so we did not build them a trellis.

Instead of using traditional rows, we decided to try using 4x4ft planting areas. In the first square we planted carrots (scarlet nantes and purple haze) and interspersed each row of carrots with radishes. In the second square we planted potatoes. In the third we planted swiss chard, and in the fourth we planted lettuce. In the back of the garden we planted two rhubarb starts. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. After a few weeks, we almost gave up that anything would happen. We started wondering what we did wrong.

And then one day the peas popped up...

And the radishes...

And the potatoes began to push up through the dirt...

And the rhubarb that I thought I might have killed began to show signs that, it too, had survived my inexperience.

Our peach tree that looked sick and stricken with blight in the winter came back to life also (though we are still treating it for the blight).

And within a few short weeks we had our first crop of radishes! For such an ordinary and unexciting vegetable, there was a lot of excitement in our house the first time we ate a salad with our home grown radishes. If it gives you any idea just how excited we got, whenever we go to the grocery store, Emmett demands that we pass the radishes at least three times so he can point and shout, "Ooo! It's RADISHES! Do you see the RADISHES?!" We were immensely proud of our first small success.

We planted herbs in pots and outlined our garden with them. Most of our herbs seem to be dying. We'll see what happens to them. None of the herb seeds we started ourselves actually made it past the first seedling stages. Even the mint seeds died. It was sad.

Darwin decided to use one of our planting squares as a large kitty litter box and dug up all the swiss chard seeds. Since nothing seemed to be growing there, we planted five broccoli starts.

To our surprise, two swiss chard seeds actually survived Darwin's potty habits to grow alongside the broccoli.

Our lettuce took off, as did the garlic that we had planted to outline each small plot. We planted russo lettuce and red leaf lettuce.

Then we purchased seven (yes, seven) tomato plants. We got beef master, better boy, early girl, roma, patio, sun sugar, and super sweet 100 plus. Was this going overboard? Maybe, but we figure too many tomatoes is a good problem to have.

And we planted one red pepper plant and one orange pepper plant.

Our grapes woke up.

Potatoes got bigger.

Carrots finally appeared.

We made a tee-pee and planted green beans. They practically jumped out of the ground.

Our peas took off! The sugar snap peas produced so prolifically that even though the seed package said support wasn't necessary, they have collapsed onto themselves and fallen over from the weight of so many pods.

We planted zucchini inside of a tomato cage hoping that we can train it to grow vertically (we'll let you know how that turns out!)

We planted two cantalope plants and one crenshaw melon plant inbetween rows of peas, hoping that by the time they grew large enough to be a problem, the peas will be done producing. Again, we'll see how that turns out.

The brocolli produced beautifully. We ate our first one last night with dinner. It's slightly more bitter than grocery store brocoli, and because the plants take up so much space, we're not sure if we'll grow it again. Still, it was fun and exciting!

The lettuce grew to gigantic proportions and we have more of it than we could possibly use before it grows too old and becomes bitter. We had to start giving it away to neighbors to make sure it got used while it was still tasty.

The best way to make friends is to send this little boy knocking at the neighbor's doors with a head of lettuce that's as big as he is. No one can resist such a cute little face!

In the back of the garden we planted honeydew (for Casey) and two sugar baby watermelon plants, then put down a layer of mulch to trap moisture and heat. We've seen a lot of you-tube tutorials on growing melons vertically, so we're going to give it a try.

Our current garden, minus the two butternut squash seedlings that we've also planted with hopes for training them to grow vertically.

And of course our much loved peach tree, with peaches popping up everywhere. It took several hours over the course of a weekend to thin the peaches to one every four inches, and there are still more than I think we will ever be able to eat.

And there is simply the sheer joy of sitting in the grass with a pile of fresh peas, snacking and playing. Emmett loves going into the garden to pick peas. We used to worry at first about letting him pick them on his own because he would frequently pick the ones that weren't ripe, but now there are so many that we don't mind if he picks a few before they are ready. He is always begging for more, and I love it.

 

We're beginning to harvest some of our carrots also, and again it is funny how excited we all get over vegetables. But we are having such a great time.

And for all the joy that Emmett gets out of helping us water, pull weeds, and pick vegetables, we've been so glad that we took the time to try what was a very intimidating project for us city folk. I'm glad we don't have to depend on our garden for survival, but it's been a great family hobby and we're taking notes so that we can build off of this year's experiences for next summer.