I’ve always thought it would be really cool to have a garden. When we finally bought a house and had property that was “ours” to do with what we pleased… I pondered for a while just how to begin. We were lucky enough to inherit some great plants with our new yard and I’ve added something new just about every year. I still want a great big beautiful oak tree in the back yard, but currently my vegetable garden is proving to be quite a rewarding effort!
Last year’s garden was a little 3 by 6 foot plot that barely managed to produce a few small cayenne peppers and a single doomed pumpkin (this is about as big as it got). When this past spring rolled around, I told myself that if I was truly going to grow supplemental food for our family of one large-grown and two still-growing young lads, I was going to need more space.
It took the help of willing friends, a few broken farming implements and a whole lot of sweat… but we got ourselves a garden patch cleared out of the back corner and I must say I was quite proud of it after we’d finished. Already this year I’ve considered expanding it further along the western fence, to allow more room for the vining squash and pumpkin that I’m enjoying, and still be able to grow maybe some corn and string beans as well.
My beginnings were humble, but grand all at the same time. Once we had the plot of earth turned up (thanks, Claudia!) and had mixed in the compost I pushed the soil into raised ridges ready for new plants. I tried to plant two rows of carrots from seed -but they never did appear.
I had started Oregon Pea Pods (on the little fences to the left), watermelon (barely visible little things in the center row) and summer squash (second row from the right). The two tomato plants and two sweet bell pepper plants on the far right fence I purchased from the greenhouse.
Occasionally I had to turn on the hose during the hot dry days of June/July but for the most part I let my garden grow… unfortunately I didn’t do much weeding. One fine morning in early August I stepped out into the yard to check on the plantings and found the entire garden patch was overgrown with tall grasses. They were almost two feet high, and the actual veggies were struggling for sun and rain through that mess. Finally, it took two barefoot mornings outside in my nightgown with gardening gloves but I got the whole patch cleared up of the weeds.
The pile was (and still is) epic. Once I had cleared away all the volunteer growth, however, I was quite pleased to find healthy survivors of every thing but the carrots -which never came up in the first place as far as I’m aware. The tomatoes on my deck were larger than those in the garden, but they hadn’t had weeds to contend with and being so much closer to the back door they probably got more water, too.
The pile of weeds is another issue I need to address, as I have still not gone out to the junk store to pick up a used wheelbarrow, and the new ones are kinda pricey. Each morning now I go out into the garden to check on everything and pull a few weeds. Each weed I pull gets tossed onto this ever-growing pile and the garden remains fruitful and clear this way. It’s wild, though, it seems the early morning when I’m out checking my plants is the best time to catch fuzzy yellow bumblebees playing among the giant yellow flowers of the pumpkins and squash. The mosquitoes are early risers as well, because every morning I get a few new welts from the little bastards. This morning I actually scratched one from my temple mid-gulp and caught some blood on my finger.
So the garden is doing well now and producing veggies, although it’s very slow. Each plant gives up a single fruit every few days to a week now, but I can see bunches of little green tomatoes that look as if they’ll come to fruition together in the next month or so. The summer squash has given me three specimen, one of which rotted due to what looked like a bug attack. The other two are in my kitchen waiting to be steamed with a sprinkle of garlic pepper.
For Lammas Eve I took the boys out into the garden and let each of them harvest a vegetable. We talked about how agriculture played such a huge part in the religious practices of country folks (and witches) in the old days, and how important the harvest was to their way of life. I was probably more excited than they were, but each of them seemed to view the picking of a carefully tended (ahem) vegetable from mom’s garden like a serious honor.
Even in the few weeks since this picture was taken, the plants have exploded with life! The sunflower’s leaves are huge, and I’m hoping to get a bloom heavy with edible (and re-plantable) seeds before frost hits. The summer squash has slithered around to the back fence and is growing around the base of the grapevine (which still lives despite the horrid aphid attacks this summer and having been left with leaves like doilies but no grapes). The pumpkin grew to the edge of the garden and I redirected it toward the white fencing (which is practically bereft of peas now) and it’s grown all the way back on itself as well.
I hope we have our own home-grown pumpkins to carve for Samhain this year!
