It’s been a month since I planted the garden seeds and I’d say my experiment has been a success. About 2/3 of the plants are growing from the holes I dug and the remaining 1/3 are from the seeds I simply stomped into the dirt. That’s in line with the way I planted them. We’ll have to wait to see how much fruit the plants produce, but these early results suggest that I’ve been wasting time and money buying more mature plants at farmers’ markets and at the big box stores.
The wife’s been trying to talk me into getting a few chickens for a couple of years. We already have a garden in the backyard and she insists that other homes in our neighborhood have much more developed backyard gardens complete with rainwater catchment systems, bee hives and chicken coops. As part of her sales pitch, she bought tickets to the first annual Greenville Urban Farm Tour.
A few years ago, we had great success with our backyard garden. The next year, we were impacted by the tomato blight that plagued everyone who purchased their plants at big box stores. Heavy rains that June also gave our zucchini and squash root rot. About the only things that worked out were the cayenne peppers, and that’s because the gophers have enough sense not to touch them. Last year, we bought our plants at the farmer’s market and had about the same success as the year before. I experimented with some tomatillo seeds and they brought an unexpectedly bountiful harvest. Because we have so many cheap farmers’ markets close to our house, I decided I wasn’t going to put a lot of money or work into the garden this year. I spent about sixteen bucks on these seeds.
Last time I blogged about our garden, everything had just gone into the ground. Now that spring is slowly turning into summer, everything is starting to grow. We’ve lost a plant or two, but everything else is doing great — especially compared to last year’s blight.
I somehow talked my wife into going to the farmers market with me on Saturday morning. We got there five minutes after they opened and it was already packed. I forgot it was the annual spring plant sale, which is probably better described as the Battle of the Blue-Hairs. We ended up buying way too many plants for our garden again. They’re only a dollar apiece for most of the seedlings and you can mix and match to your heart’s content. That’s great because you don’t get stuck buying an 8-pack of cayenne plants. More importantly, many of these plants are from heirloom seeds, so we’re supposed to be protected from the blight that hit all the big box store plants last year.
Our garden didn’t produce very much this year. The combination of heavy rain in June followed immediately by a heat wave kept most of our plants from maturing. The vegetables we did produce were mostly eaten by the squirrels. For whatever reason, our cayenne plants produced like machines. And as you might expect, the pests left them alone.
We were left scratching our heads, wondering what to do with so many peppers.
We hoped that by this time of year, we’d be drowning in fresh produce. Sadly, the excessive heat and rain in June stunted our garden growth. Most of our squash, zucchini and onions are dead. We’re awash in banana and cayenne peppers, and our leeks are looking pretty good. Still, I’ve been salivating over fried green tomatoes since we planted the garden, but our plants just don’t seem to be producing very much. I was pleasantly surprised when I went to a farmer’s market in the Mount Laurel neighborhood near Birmingham, AL, this past weekend, and picked up a sackful of these:
They were all green on Saturday, but by Monday night they were starting to turn. Still, it’s the ripeness that matters, not the skin color.
True believers will no doubt find it difficult to accept that they’ve been paying a premium for Food A over Food B even though the only difference between the two is the label:
Organic food has no nutritional or health benefits over ordinary food, according to a major study published Wednesday. [...] A systematic review of 162 scientific papers published in the scientific literature over the last 50 years, however, found there was no significant difference. [...] “Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”
As with any myth that is debunked, many believers will either discount the scientific research that invalidates their superstitions or they’ll reshuffle their supposed motivations.
The previous owners of our house had dogs. Anyone who’s ever had a dog knows that they leave hard-trodden trails that usually lead from the back door to various views through the fence. Well, our back yard was one huge dirt trail. The erosion was so bad, and the grass was so sparse, that any trip to the backyard resulted in red footprints throughout our house. So when we dug out the beds for our garden, I spread the leftover soil around the worst parts of the yard and dropped some grass seed.
This is what it looked like last Spring.
The weather is finally nice, so we decided to get the garden in before the rain this week. So last weekend, while I cut and seeded the grass, my wife tilled and planted most of the garden. We had some survivors from last year’s crop. Our chives are thriving, as well as our parsley, sage and oregano.
The right side of the garden will have herbs (rosemary, thyme, Greek oregano, parsley, chives, basil, mint and lavender), red and yellow onions, strawberries and cantaloupe. The left side will have heirloom, roma and green tomatoes, red and green bell peppers, cayenne and banana peppers, squash and zucchini. There’s more room, so maybe we’ll plant some radicchio and eggplant later this month.
