still thinking… again.

In recent weeks, my blog has been getting hammered by people looking for gardening info. I feel badly for them… although I’m very glad to have them visit, I’m fairly positive that they’re not finding what they’re looking for here. My gardening efforts are sadly inadequate compared to all the “real” gardeners out there.

But while I’m talking about the garden, am going to record recent happenings/observations:

• My bell peppers were languishing, but suddenly seem to have turned the corner. I haven’t done anything differently, so have no idea what made them decide to behave. Check out this little guy (pictured to the right)… isn’t he kinda cute?  And please ignore all the buggy bites on the leaves — I guess I need to figure out what to do to discourage the bugs, but just haven’t.

• The dogs have discovered a fondness for green tomatoes… I’ve caught them on several occasions gnawing on the little baby ‘maters. I’ve scolded them soundly, and haven’t seen them stealing any lately, but don’t know if it’s because they’ve learned their lesson, or they’ve just gotten smarter about hiding it from me.

• Putting cages around the cucumbers has been my best decision of Garden 2009. They are doing ridiculously well, and are producing like mad. I picked 13 — yes, THIRTEEN — yesterday! Quite a change from last year, when I got only maybe two the entire season. And they’re abnormally long, I guess because they’re hanging from their vines instead of laying on the ground?  Bobby, being the 13-yr-old boy that he is, has had lots of obscene comments about the size and length of the cucumbers. I’m sure you can imagine. Dork.

• In addition to 13 cucumbers, yesterday’s “harvest” also included 2 zucchini squash and 8 sweet banana peppers. Here’s everything in the kitchen sink. I put the ruler in there as reference because I was amazed by the sheer massiveness of the two 16-inch cucumbers. Yes, 16 INCHES.

• Potatoes… huh. Not sure I’ll do potatoes again. They were an impulse plant, not really something that I fully intended. I guess I’m a little confused as to the benefit of growing potatoes for someone like me, who needs a small garden with maximum productivity. Unless I’ve misunderstood, potatoes are only harvested once at the end of their season. Which means that I’m going to have a shit-ton of potatoes at the end of the summer, and then that’s it. For my gardening purposes, I think I prefer the plants that I can continually pick throughout the summer, rather than just a one-time thing….  But it’s entirely possible that I’m missing some crucial bit of potato knowledge. Dunno.

• Zucchini plants are doing fine. Not overly excited about zucchini as a general rule, but I’m going to try some new recipes and see if I can convince my housemates (and myself) that zucchini really does rock after all.

• And about the raised bed. You may remember that I had a whole decision-making process that went into our single raised bed, and we finally built one as a “test bed.” Well, ya’ll, I gotta say that I’m not loving my raised bed. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, because it seems quite apparent that something’s not right. I’m kind of embarrassed to even post this picture because I hate publishing my suckiness, but let’s look at this as a learning exercise, shall we?

Pictured below is what your raised bed garden SHOULD NOT look like. The snaky-looking thing is the soaker hose. The little plants in the upper left-hand corner of the box are parsley and cilantro.  The plants in the lower right-hand corner are basil and mint.  The herbs are doing fine… the watermelon plants, not so much. What watermelon plants, you ask??  Exactly!! You can’t see them because they’re DEAD.

So all you gardening gods & goddesses out there, if you’re reading, do you have any input, suggestions, or knowledge that you would like to share?  Or if there are any novices like me, I’m interested to hear your opinions/experiences too!

The little garden is thriving… there’s really very few things that make me happier than digging around in my yard dirt. This is the garden as of yesterday:

The tomatoes, zucchini squash, & banana peppers are doing quite nicely. The bell peppers seem to be struggling, however — the leaves are holey, and it appears that bugs have been snacking on them. I tried potatoes for the first time this year… 6 reds and 6 whites. All the white potatoes are growing, but two of the reds didn’t make it. I dug them up yesterday, and the eyes never sprouted for some reason. Weird.

*Side note: potatoes are SO freakin’ easy to grow. You just wait until the ones in your pantry start sprouting “eyes”, cut them up with approx. two eyes per chunk, and pop them in the ground about 3-4 inches under the surface. About 1-2 wks later, *VOILA*, teeny potatoes plants are appearing.

Jury’s still out on the raised bed vs. row debate. Bobby built the one “test” bed (click here for our shopping list), but I also did raised rows, which you can kinda see in the picture below. Basically I just piled the dirt up to increase drainage and to also create paths between the rows so I have full access to all the plants. I raked leaves, and used them to line the paths, thus eliminating the problem of muddy shoes.

I also cut grass for the first time yesterday. This job has always fallen under Bobby’s responsibilities, but he’s been busy, and I was feeling ambitious yesterday. We have a relatively small yard (0.25 acre, which is big for the city, but tiny compared to the country where I grew up), so we have only a push mower. Did the yard and was still feeling sassy, so I heading outside the back fence (you can kinda see it in the pic above), and attacked the waist-high weeds back there as well.  My trusty mower was a bit reluctant, but together we prevailed.

After prying myself away from the laptop yesterday, I headed into the great outdoors to begin Project Garden. My dad, in a rare show of fatherly involvement, hauled his tiller over this past Saturday and tilled a patch of earth for me. Last year’s garden was relatively small (about 9ft wide x 5ft long).  Since it was my first foray into gardening, I wanted to start small… realized quickly that I had a crammed a few too many plants into a too-small space.

So when Daddy got his tiller out and asked me for measurements, I told him “bigger than last year.” And oh my, did he comply. He got till-happy — he started and didn’t stop for 4 hours — thus resulting in a substantially larger space. This year’s plot is 9ft wide (again) x 27ft long. Yep, about 5 times longer than last year’s.

When I headed out yesterday, I grabbed a hoe and immediately started viciously hacking away at the earth, serial killer style. This lasted approximately 20 minutes before black spots started appearing, head started swimming, and I had to plunk myself in the dirt to avoid passing right the heck out. Lesson of the day: massive amounts of cold medicine and wild hoeing don’t mix.

Dusted myself off after a while, and decided to try a different, less violent approach. Collected a notepad from the house and copied down all the spacing requirements for my little plants. Any veteran gardeners out there, I know your eyeballs probably just melted…  yes, I bought plants and tilled without any pre-planning. Happy, random gardener, that’s me. Then sat on the front porch and began methodically plotting my attack.

So here’s where the debate begins. Should I:

A) Proceed with the traditional, basic ground-level garden with rows? This is what I did last year and it was easy-peasy.

Pros: Short-term, it’s the easiest approach. I can just dig holes, pop my plants in, and water like I did last year.

Cons: But last year, the garden was only 5ft wide, so I could reach all the plants for picking and weeding without walking into the plot — this year, that won’t be the case. And last year, I noticed that yard has poor drainage, which is (I think) why my watermelons, cucumbers, and cantaloupes rotted on their vines.

or should I:

B) Try a raised-bed garden? This is apparently the not-so-new fad in gardening, which I discovered yesterday in my quest for the perfect garden plan.

Pros: Eliminates poor drainage problem. Also allows easy access to all plants without actually walking into the plot. Reduces weeds. Plus, I think it just looks nice and neat.

Cons: Decisions – do we buy premade beds or build our own? Cost – the beds aren’t cheap. Short-term inconvenience – I can’t just plant and water right this minute. And then there’s the permanence factor — what if I don’t like having raised beds? What if my raised beds are ugly? Then I’m stuck with them. And what do you do with them during the winter? Do they just sit there emptily?

So yeah, my garden is still unplanted as of today, but I still feel that a bit of progress was made.