Garden Harvest
Welcome back, dear reader.
I know that there are many of you out there that love to grow plants. Just know that I do as well. There is something about watching a tiny seedling wiggle forth from the soil to become a plant that in some cases is larger than myself.
Also growing plants brings me peace. It must be the color green or just knowing that I am in the presence of another organism. For many years I struggled with finding this peace due to living in an apartment. Also by not knowing my resources.
Living in an apartment led me to lamenting over the fact that I did not have a yard to grow my seasonal vegetables.
So, what did I do? Well, I bought large pots, small pots, and pots that were not even pots. I tried my hand at growing a multitude of plants. This went on for many years. I eventually realized I should join a community garden, so that’s what I did. I found a community garden, paid my dues for the year and started gardening in the two raised beds that were something like four by eight feet. It was glorious and a lot of fun.
Eventually we moved into a house. Though there were no gardens. So, we went back to what we knew. Raised beds that were four by eight. Though someone had to build them.
Yep, Elexa and I bought the wood, cut it, and fastened the boards together. The dirt was the tricky part, though. The portion of the yard that held the gardens was not accessible by truck. Oh, and it was not easily accessible by wheelbarrow either. We moved the dirt for all four gardens by five-gallon buckets.
Let me tell you, this is something I don’t really want to repeat. It was difficult work, but we got all the dirt moved in three days. Which I am quite proud of. With four gardens completed, we each took two for our own to plant.
It’s always difficult for me to decide what to plant in a garden. I usually end up buying way too many packets of seeds. This year was no different. I ended up storing the extra seeds in a seed storage container for next year.
The seeds I did settle on were tomatoes, marigolds, and sunflowers. I also threw some potatoes in the end of one of my gardens.
I have always wanted an herb garden, so I planted sage, rosemary, and oregano in the end of my other garden. I feel like there are beautiful herb gardens all over the internet. I had planted the sage as eye candy originally. I didn’t think much of it and of course it ended up taking over almost half of the herb garden section. So, now I am racking my brain to figure out what to do with handfuls and handfuls of sage. The best idea so far was to dry it and make sage bundles.
I recently purchased a dehydrator. This has given me the idea to dehydrate my herbs. Do I know what I am going to do with them after they are dehydrated? Nope. But it’s something to do with them.
Okay, back to my planting layout.
I positioned the sunflowers around the border of each garden so as to provide some shade to my tomato plants.
Tomatoes love sun, so this might seem counterintuitive. The thought behind this was that my tomato plants wouldn’t dry out as fast with some shade. It seemed to work. I was rewarded with bowls and bowls of tomatoes. Here are a few that I thought looked picture perfect on our outdoor table.
Now that we have gardens and fall is upon us, I have been curious about planting winter crops. This is something that I need to look into, but for now, I will see you on the next post, dear reader.
-Abe
