The Bitten Word

Garden Update: Closing Up for the Season

An Update on Our Backyard Garden

The first frost is a-comin', and our garden seems ready for it. 

Our okra has lost the will to live, our tomatoes are sagging, and our prolific basil has finally given out. Only the peas are hanging on, trying desperately to produce pods before the first frost hits.

As the gardening season comes to an end, we thought we'd share our plans for the garden this winter. 

First, though, let's look at how the remaining plants are doing. 

Garden Update: Storms, Varmints and Replanting

There's something about watering the garden in the early evenings that has become a nice end to the workday. Something about seeing the daily progress of the plants, even in the heat of the past month, is almost soothing.

That is, until August 2, 2011. 

Picture it: a hot August Tuesday. We came home after a long day at work, eager to visit the garden.

We discovered we had a problem when we found a squirrel with one of our beautiful, ripe tomatoes in his mouth. He took one look at us, decided to get while the getting was good, and scurried up a nearby tree. He had gone on a full-out tomato binge -- leaving scraps of other tomatoes littering the ground. 

Garden Update: Fear and a Little Bit of Loathing

An Update on Our Backyard Garden

Though we try to be fearless in the kitchen, willing to tackle just about any task or new dish, something about gardening strikes pure fear into our hearts.

In the two years that we've been trying to plant and grow vegetables, we've read a good amount of gardening books and have friends to offer solid green-thumb advice.

But there's something about the uncertainty of the garden -- "Is this plant dying?," "Are we getting enough sun? Enough water?," "Is this what I planted or a weed?" -- that is simultaneously thrilling and completely depressing.

That's not to say that things aren't going well in our garden. There's a lot to celebrate. Most excitedly, we have a bunch of tomatoes that are ripening on the vine. All of our tomatoes are small varieties, and we easily already have 30 tomatoes that have formed, with more on the way. The largest of the tomatoes are starting to get a little color, and we can't wait to start harvesting them.

Garden Update: First Harvest (and First Casualties)

An Update on Our Backyard Garden

Previously on "Garden Wars"....

Our little seedlings were chugging along. Some of them had been transferred to the garden. Others were waiting for the big trip to the backyard. 

Well, a lot has happened since then!

Some plants are thriving. Others have died (moment of silence, please). And we've even harvested a few things. 

Our little seedlings all matured and were transplanted out to the yard. Here's where things stand:

Garden Update: From Seeds to Seedlings

An Update on Our Backyard Garden

One of the fascinating things about growing our little garden this year has been watching the seedlings emerge from their pods in their little greenhouse. Some of them almost literally explode out of the soil, taking a significant amount of dirt up into the air on their little leaves. It's been almost inspiring.

But getting our garden started for this summer hasn't been all inspiration and cheers of success. There's plenty of fretting (Do they have enough water? Are the plants spaced too closely together?) and playing the age-old game of "Something I Planted or a Weed?" 

Back Into the Garden

Our first attempt at gardening was a valiant effort, but also an utter failure. 

As we shared at the end of last summer, our beans struggled to produce and varmints stole our green tomatoes before they could ever mature. In the end, we harvested a few pounds of green beans and two tiny, tasteless tomatoes. 

Undaunted, we're going back into the garden! For one, we promised to. But also, we want to have at least one semi-successful garden under our belts so we can be those people who smugly talk how "OUR tomatoes" are so much better than what we can get at the supermarket. (Just kidding; we hope to never be those people.)

Anyway, Garden Project 2011 is in full swing.  Here's what we've done so far.

Two Novices Walk Into a Garden...

So it turns out you can actually drop seeds in the ground and they turn into plants.

For reals!

We planted our first garden this year, and all summer it was a constant source of amazement for both of us. 

In previous years, we've grown herbs in window boxes at the front of our house. We love having these herbs on hand through the spring, summer and fall. We've typically grown thyme, rosemary, mint and basil, but this year our sage also came back (the plant is huge!), along with our tarragon. And we received some chive seedlings from our CSA that we planted as well.  It's a happy little herb family, at least when they're not being terrorized by neighborhood squirrels. 

But this year we decided to step it up a bit and plant an actual garden.

We have a small backyard that we share with our neighbors. There's a patio with a table and chairs and room for a grill. And our compost bin is hidden back there under a tree.  Much of the ground is covered with evergreen groundcover that comes back year after year, but in the back of the yard there's a patch that we had for several years considered turning into a garden. It gets decent sun and is out of the way since it's against a fence. 

So here's a chronicle of our first stab at gardening. It begins one Saturday in early May, when we borrowed some yard tools and got to digging.