I have officially joined the home gardening/community garden craze. I am apparently one of 75 million this year, according to garden columnist Ann Lovejoy.
This weekend was all about the outdoors, notably, getting my vegetable and herb garden set. As I explore cooking good food, the more I crave fresh herbs and produce.
In addition to joining a CSA this year, I took to filling beds and pots with a variety of fruit, herbs and veggies.
This isn’t the first time I’ve plopped some vegetables into the dirt. A few years back, I had a bed full of mass twisting tomato vines that killed everything else in their paths that produced masses of basketball-sized tomatoes. Seriously, basketball. OK, like kiddie basketball. It was a year of plenty of rain and the poor things never did ripen, despite my attempt to hang them in the house after nearly half of them exploded.
I also have rosemary, thyme and a few other edibles scattered around the flower garden.
This year, we built a raised bed to help drainage, and we dragged out all the pots that had been stacking up in the shed. I got all my starts in this weekend, even though the work was nearly undone by one 40-pound mutt (named Suki) who apparently thought digging out holes in the bed and scattering the pots all over the patio was world-class fun. If she wasn’t so darn cute, I might offer her up here. So, we salvaged what we could and surrounded the place with kennel wire. We’ll see today if the garden holds.
I still haven’t gone all the way, tearing out a majority of my yard for food, like some Kitsap gardeners. But it’s a start. So far I’ve got two varieties of heirloom tomatoes, thai basil, sweet basil, oregano, greens, strawberries (LOTS of strawberries), sweet peas, an artichoke, some asparagus, garlic, and some white radishes with purple centers. It’s pretty ambitious, but if only half survive, I’ll be happy.
Have any of you started a new food garden or joined together with others in a community garden? Share what you’re growing and how it’s going in the comments.
