How Does Your Garden Grow

It’s been a while since I have had a garden. My first garden died. I was working full time and stopped watering the poor thing. I had a few successes in my square foot garden after that, but more fails. I just never stuck with the daily watering. Our new yard has endless possibilities for the giant garden I’ve always dreamed of, but it’s going to take time, money and hard work to set it up. Plus, we'll have to be strategic with the location because of the irrigation. In the interim, we took out some of our rose bushes (we probably had about 15, so plenty to spare) and called it our garden spot. The soil was good, but best of all, the drip system was already in, requiring minimal modifications to have an auto-watered garden. Even with that, I wasn’t expecting much. I used seeds I had from two years ago and I started them late. After having good luck with them sprouting quickly, I waited too long to get them into the ground, so not only was their growth stunted but I am pretty sure I traumatized them when I finally transplanted them into the garden. Even after all that, I am still happy with the success we've had.

{Top: corn, curly cue on melon vine (that's almost better than the fruit!), melon, zucchini

Bottom: roma tomato, butterhead lettuce, another curly cue, bell peppers}

{Deformed radish, yellow squash and zucchini}

Summary of results (boring, but I want to remember for next year):

Corn (seed) – at least a few ears between 8 stalks, growing well, but not consistent between stalks
Sweet 100’s (plant from Costco) – almost died after transplant, but has revived nicely, we get 4-5 tomatoes every 5-6 days that Clara and I normally eat right away
Romas (little plant from Wal Mart) – this plant has grown like crazy and is probably the biggest surprise, lots of fruit on the bush waiting to turn red
Bell peppers (seeds) – I don’t think any of these made it
Bell peppers (tiny plant from Wal Mart) – growing well; mini bell peppers are cute, 2 well established peppers, hopefully more will come
Butterhead lettuce (seed) – growing nicely
Spinach (seed) – the one surviving plant is mostly dead
Romaine (seed) – growing okay, but not as good as in my square foot garden
Melons (seed) – nice plant, but only teeny tiny little melons (I love the curly cues on the melon vine - see photos above)
Watermelons (seed) – tiny plant, no hopes of anything growing on it
Radishes (seed) – one giant, disfigured one that was inedible
Beets (seed) – not so great, but we'll see
Turnips (seed) – not so great, but we'll see (I think my root vegetables suffered the most from being stuck in my seed starters too long)
Basil (plant from Lowe’s) – yay! first basil plant I haven’t killed in my life!; thriving and I use it a few times a week
Strawberries (plant from Wal Mart) – we’ve gotten about a dozen strawberries; planted more for fun than anything
Jalapenos (seed) – tiny plants, no reason to believe I will get anything from them since they still haven't even flowered
Yellow Squash (seed) – got one nice sized squash early on and not a single one is in the works despite the plants being big, so who knows what’s going on
Zucchini (seed) – doesn’t grow for a while then doubles in size, it’s weird; first zucchini was giant, a few more, smaller are coming along as well

I love gardening. I love watching them grow, picking and eating the fruits of our labor and pondering how so many lessons can be learned from the act of gardening.