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.
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.
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.
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.
We have a conspicuous concrete slab in the back corner of our lot that was part of some sort of carport at one time. We wanted to put in a raised-bed garden in front of the makeshift patio, but the land isn’t level. We decided we could mimic raised beds by digging channels for the lumber and mixing compost in the planting area. Here are the boards for the beds:
You should have seen me trying to drive with these 2x10x12s on top of my car.
