Reflections on my first season of gardening

My garden is wilting, but I suppose it's time for that. Summer never fails to leave too soon. I was out in my garden today, picking the last of my beans and wondering if my green tomatoes are going to turn red soon (don't they know I'm ready??), reflecting on how much I've learned this summer. I definitely feel a sense of pride, knowing that I nurtured those tiny little seeds until they grew into big fruit and vegetable producing plants. Growing stuff = much satisfaction.

But I will admit, in the ratio of "success!" to "oh whoops- probably shouldn't have done that..." the "oh whoops" won out this year. Thankfully, I told myself at the beginning of the season that this was my year to learn and make mistakes in the garden. Next year my goal will be actual food. ;-)

First, the successes:

1. Stuff grew from little to big! Even though the goal was vegetables, just the fact that most of my plants didn't die in their infancy was a pretty big success for me.
   
   
   A few weeks old.
   
   
   Getting bigger!
   
   
   Finally starting to fill out.
   
   
   Last picture I took in the summer- almost at it's peak.
   
   
2. Even more exciting: vegetables grew! And we ate them. Most successful were my green bean plants- not surprising since I've heard a three year old could grow these things. After that I got a lot of zucchini and way more basil than I knew what to do with. My cucumber vines grew a couple cucumbers, but I ended up having to pull them out b/c they got too big and overtook my garden. My banana pepper plant only gave me three peppers and same with my bell pepper plant.
   
   
   First zucchini!
   
   
   
   
   
   

Second, my "whoops" list- or "things I won't do next year:"

1. Don't over-water. Everything I read online stressed the importance of watering a vegetable garden. So I watered. Every.day. When my tomato plants started wilting I talked to someone at our local farmer's market "help" booth and she suggested I had "wilt disease." A few weeks later I talked to a friend and she told me to stop watering. Low and behold! My plants came back to life. Well, except one zucchini plant that had been over-watered to the point of rotting. Yikes. I guess my area gets enough rain to sustain a garden on it's own!

2. Don't plant too close together! When I planted my little baby seedlings they seemed so tiny, so I planted closer than the packet instructed. Big mistake. I ended up pulling 2 zucchini plants and a cucumber vine because I didn't have enough space.

3. Label your plants! For the first 3-4 weeks after planting I did not know what was growing where because I failed to label properly. Those little white plastic things do not hold up to rain and critters. I went to a craft store to see if I could find little signs to use, but came back empty handed. I ended up buying wooden spoons (50 cents each) and then spray painting and labeling to use as signs.





4. Open the little seed starters better. I planted my seeds in little soil filled mesh pods, but failed to open the pods sufficiently. As a result, my radishes and carrots grew in very strange shapes!



Other than that, I think I did pretty good! I also had a problem with Japanese beetles eating my plants, but the only want to solve that is 1) use a pesticide (which I won't do for the sake of the earth) and 2) go out in the evening and flick the pests into a glass of soapy water and kill them. I don't have any desire to spend my evenings flicking bugs. My plants all survived the beetles this year so hopefully they will again next year.

I know many a writer has drawn comparisons between gardening and life or weeds and death/sin, so I won't repeat all those lessons other than to say: I get it now. Life is amazing, in both human and plant form. Growth seems miraculous. Disease and death are always frustrating and, at times, devastating. If you want to spend a summer not only enjoying fresh vegetables, but reflecting on the mystery of life, grow a garden. You'll be amazed, perplexed, frustrated, joyful, hungry, and satisfied, all within the boundaries of a few square feet of land.

Soup & Salad

If you name your daughter "Apple" you might get a side eye from me, but I'm all for second chances. And a second chance is just what I needed to give actress Gwenyth Paltrow, who, as it turns out, wrote an awesome cookbook. Our friends Paul and Lindsay (who I'd comfortably label "foodies") gave us this book as a housewarming gift a couple weeks ago and I've been loving my kitchen life ever since.

Being married to a pastor I have ample opportunity to hone my culinary skills. Tonight we had a couple from church over for dinner and with the heat today, I decided to go simple: soup and salad. I've also been trying to health-up our (well, "my"- and John's be default) eating habits by reducing refined sugars and using more fresh, nutrient rich ingredients. Our eating habits weren't bad... but there's always room for improvement.

On the menu:

• Fresh baked (bought) bread with pesto inspired by the Simply in Season cookbook
• Slow Roasted Tomato Soup from Gwyneth's My Father's Daughter cookbook
• Mayo-less Tuna Salad with Arugula from skinnytaste.com
  
• Berry Crumble from My Father's Daughter

Pesto

I've always wanted to make my own pesto, but that much basil is pricey to buy in store. Luckily the basil plants in my garden are doing great and I've been searching for reasons to use it!

This is a basic recipe:

• 1 cup basil leaves
• 2 cloves garlic
  
• 3 tbs Parmesan (I use nutritional yeast)
• 1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• Combine and blend
  

Basil from my garden (1 cup)


I use nutritional yeast instead of Parmesan because I'm lactose intolerant. Nutritional yeast has a savory taste that rivals the best cheese and is full of B vitamins (3 tbs).




Love my Magic Bullet!


Delicious on a fresh baked loaf of bread.



Slow Roasted Tomato Soup

• This recipe is copyrighted but worth buying (or borrowing from the library) this cookbook!
  
  
  
  Slow Roasted Tomatoes. These take 4 hours at 250* so I left my oven on while I drove to pick up John from work; I worried the entire time. I left the doors unlocked in case the house burned down so our cat Jasper could escape. Like that would help.
  
  
  Soup! (My plating-without-spilling-on-the-edge skills need some practice)
  
  
  
  
  Inspired by blogger Mama Natural I made the switch this month from regular iodized salt to natural salt, which contains lots of good-for-you trace minerals. The salt has a more earthy taste than what I'm used to, but I am starting to prefer it.
  
  
  

Mayo-less Tuna Salad

• recipe found here (skinnytaste.com)
  
  Capers, arugula, and pasta oh my!
  
  
  

Berry Crumble

• Another copyrighted recipe (again- buy this cookbook!) but what I love about this recipe is that it only uses 1/3 cup brown sugar. The rest is all natural sweetness from the fruit. Awesome!
  
  I used strawberries (picked 'em myself when we went berry picking with our small group!), raspberries, and blackberries.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

The only problem I really had with this meal was that a certain someone kept napping in the middle of my kitchen rug and refusing to move out of my way. He also went a little nutso when I opened the tuna can for the salad. Good thing he's cute. ;)

Gardening

One week until my one-month-iversary with my garden! And things are actually growing!


Green pepper


Cucumber


Zucchini Squash



This is a huge accomplishment for me already. Especially since I went away for 10 days to visit my parents and didn't quite know what to expect when I came home. When I left there was lots of rain in the forecast, so when my parents asked me who was watering my garden I answered, "The sky."

The sky was not faithful to its promises, however. Or maybe the weather-person needs a new job. In any case, a friend was kind enough to water for me after 4 dry days and then it finally did rain.

When I got home the plants were all growing nicely in their designated rows, but some friends I did not recognize came to visit. So today I weeded my garden for the first time. Or I hope I weeded, at least, and not "vegetabled." I don't really know what a weed looks like versus what a vegetable plant looks like , so I just played a nice game of "guess which one of these doesn't belong??" with myself and pulled a bunch of crap out of there. We'll see in a few weeks whether I pulled the right things!

So far I can say one thing about my garden: I've learned a lot! Which is a nice way of saying I've made a lot of mistakes and hope to not repeat them next year. My parents are already doubting that I'll even have a vegetable garden next year. Those doubters (hi dad!). We'll see.

In any case, I already know my garden is way to big for how many plants I have. Next year: smaller garden. I'm also contemplating doing a raised square foot garden next year instead of a regular in-the-ground one. I *almost* did one of those this year, but some more experienced gardeners told me not to invest the money building one of those (lumber, soil, etc) until I knew whether I really liked gardening. Some of my friends have their square-foot gardens on facebook and I LOVE them. So lush and attractive. Since I planted right in the ground on a slope (only part of the yard that gets full sun), mine's a bit (okay a lot) of a crooked eyesore right now.



Don't tell it I said this, but I wince I little when I look at it. Next year will be prettier.

I'm also contemplating just going with container gardening next year. I had a few plants leftover (back when I thought my garden was "full"- yea right. Who wrote the spacing requirements on my seed packets??), so I planted them in some extra pots I had around. Look how pretty.



I *think* these are tomatoes. But I'm not entirely sure.

And my indoor herb pot looks pretty great too. Although in hindsight I wish I would have done one for cilantro and one for basil; this one has both and the cilantro is over-powering the basil. And although I love cilantro, I was more excited about the basil. I might just have to get another one of these pots and dedicate it to basil alone.



Basil in salad, basil on a sandwich, basil with goat cheese (on pizza?), basil in scrambled eggs. Mmmmmm. What else can I put basil on? ;)

Sprouting before their time!

Eep! Despite the directions clearly reading, "Plant outside in 2-3 weeks," my radishes and sunflowers have sprouted and then some and my green beans are catching up fast! Obviously I am not equipped for the "ya-gotta-sorta-feel-out-your-plants-to-know-when-their-ready-to-plant" aspect of gardening and I'm still about two weeks from building my garden in the backyard. So I have no place to put them!

Radishes

Sunflowers


I called a friend last night for advice and she suggested re-planting in a plastic container (wish I would have saved those old margarine containers like Grandma did...) until I can get them outside in two weeks.

Since it takes a village to raise a child garden, I'm looking for more advice. How long can I keep these plants in their little soil pods? Should I replant them in a bigger container like my friend suggested?

A prayer for planting

Father in heaven,

This is our food and our drink, and it is all yours.
And we ask now, help it grow and that nothing would happen to it.
May the animals not take the seeds, not the blackbirds or the blue jays.

We know you give us this food, and also food for these animals too.
In your Word it says this.
We know you created the animals and birds
and that you give them food also.

We ask, by the goodness of God,
that our corn grow over the mountains and valleys.

We don't have the power,
you have the power,
and all is in your hands.

- Domingo Coc Ico, Se'mesche', Alta Verapaz, Guatemala

~

John and I have been in our new house for almost two weeks now and are slowly unpacking. We are repainting and refinishing our hearts out, but there is one aspect of our new life as homeowners that I am very excited about: having a backyard!


















Alright, so it's not much right now... but I see potential and am on my way to fulfilling it!

Last spring I took a class called "Shalom" at school and, as they say, it changed my life. The class impacted me in many ways, and specifically in the area of ecology. I went from being a person who believed in caring about the earth because it was "a good thing to do," to being someone with a deep and steadfast biblical conviction about my God-ordained role in caring for the earth.

Since that time, John and I have been slowly and surely looking for ways to make good changes in our lifestyle. We started buying our meat from a local farm (where we know the animals were humanely raised), we try to eat vegetarian more often, we switched to eco-friendly cleaning products (probably the easiest change), we just bought a High Efficiency washer, and now: I'm going to try my hand at vegetable gardening!

When I first started toying with the idea of gardening I felt a bit overwhelmed. I'm more of an indoor person and I'm not big on getting dirty, so gardening seemed like a pretty big challenge. Then I remembered a local urban vegetable garden that John and I used to walk by in our old neighbourhood. Their beds seemed so orderly and manageable. If I could have a garden like that, I was ready to take on the challenge!

Enter google. A few searches later and I had discovered "square foot vegetable gardening:" a method of gardening that uses square/rectangular boxed beds to intensively plant a garden.

As you saw in the above backyard photo, I don't have my beds built yet, but this afternoon I took the first step toward growing my garden: I planted my seeds!

Don't tell anyone, but I had to take the easy way out and get one of these starter kits:

















... because last summer I tried to grow cilantro in a flower pot and failed terribly. Like I-only-grew-three-lousy-sprigs-of-cilantro-even-though-I-planted-four-pots-full kind of terrible. Seeds + dirt = I can't do it. But seeds + little packaged soil pods + a detailed instruction manual = YES I CAN!

So this afternoon I grabbed hold of my confidence, my starter kit, and my watering can and got to work.

As you can see on the starter kit package, I'll be growing 12 things: radishes, lettuce, carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkin, green beans, peppers, cilantro, beafsteak tomatoes, sweetie tomatoes, and cucumbers.

















Step one: open the kit and read the instructions.

















Step two: place the little soil pots in the "green-house" and water.

Step three: run out of water. Get more water.

Step four: open seed packs and admire them. Hard to believe these tiny little babies will become my summer lunch!

















Step five: plant the seeds.

































Step six: cover, pray A Prayer for Planting, and watch them grow!

In two weeks they will have all germinated. According to the directions.
Another couple weeks and it will be time to plant outside!

Stay tuned for my "we built our gardening beds!" post in a few weeks.