We’re growing a garden for the first time in several years. It’ll only be a small portion of the food we’ll eat this summer, but a little is better than none.
In the past, we’ve had a garden and grown tomatoes, a few peppers and some sweet potatoes, but it’s been a while, if ever, that we’ve actually made a full blown garden like the one we have now. I’m excited.
When I was a kid my dad always had a garden and grew all kinds of vegetables that mom would freeze or can. I remember having to water and weed the garden during the summer. I think those jobs were mostly to keep me out of trouble during the weekday. But it was a way to make me responsible for something at a young age too. And while I hated having to do it, I’m glad they made me do. I did learn a thing or two, even if I would have never admitted it to them.
I also remember sitting on the back porch snapping bean and shelling peas with mom. While I wasn’t terribly fond of messing with the beans and peas, I did enjoy sitting out there with mom and dad on the porch. Those are good memories.
But, sadly, I didn’t appreciate the garden back then and missed the opportunity to learn a ton of lessons from my dad.
But, I’m learning now and I know that would make him happy.
If you’ve ever eaten a homegrown tomato, you know how much better it is than a store bought tomato. It has so much more flavor, you can’t even compare the two.
That holds true for everything I’ve ever had out of a garden.
We have a compost pile too, but it’s not nearly big enough for the size of our garden. We’ve covered what we could with the compost we had and then bought some organic cotton burr to work into the rest.
We didn’t get the entire garden planted this year because we weren’t able to get the amendments we wanted worked into the soil over the whole garden before planting season and because we got 30 inches of rain last month. There was so much mud you just couldn’t get in it to do anything.
What We’re Growing In Our Garden
We did get several different kinds of vegetables planted, but not near as much as I’d like. But our ground is heavy clay and we have to get the rest of the ground amended in order to plant the rest. I hope to have that done in time to plant a fall garden.
Here’s what we have planted for this season.
Tomatoes
I started tomatoes from seed this year. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I actually only germinated them to see if they were good. The seeds were so old I really didn’t think they would be viable. Apparently, I was wrong. It was so cool.
Peppers
I did the same with peppers and it worked for them too. But then something ate them, completely. So, we had to buy new plant starts if we wanted peppers this year.
Radishes
I remember as a kid mom and dad putting raw radishes on the table at every supper. I never liked them. Mom and dad loved them. But, recently we were watching a video on YouTube and a lady who grew them talked about roasting them being a game changer.
So, I thought why not, and we gave it a try. They were awesome!! So, needless to say, we’ve planted a couple of rows of radishes. Let me tell you roasted radishes are completely different than raw ones.
We started the bigger radishes quite a while ago and have been eating them already. So we decided to plant a few more rows for later.
We didn’t have a great germination rate in the first batch so we planted more of them the second round. Of course they all germinated this time.
Okra
We also planted a few kinds of okra. I’ve never been an okra fan but my daughter-in-law recently discovered she liked them, so I planted some for her. My husband and I decided we’d give them another try too.
I planted two different kinds. One is the burgundy okra, shown above. The pictures I’ve seen show them to be very pretty plants. The other is the Crimson Spineless which is what I heard a lot of people talking about. Since I didn’t know anything about them, I decided I would start with what others liked best.
Cantaloupe
Several years ago a cantaloupe grew in an old compost pile we had. I got about 12 cantaloupes from that plant and they were so good and juicy. So I saved the seeds out of the last one I had. This year I planted three of those seeds. They are all growing. I’m so excited for those.
Green Beans
We both like green beans and have recently discovered these new beans (to us, at least) called Chinese noodle beans. I found something a little different called Chinese Yard Long Beans.
The people who talk about them rave about the taste.
They’re pole beans, so we’ve planted them on a trellis. I can’t wait for them to grow up the trellis and give them a try when they’re ready.
After Thoughts
As an “after thought” we decided to try a few rows of corn and a row of carrots. My husband loves carrots and I wanted to try the baby corns, which he loves too. The corn has just begun to come up, but we only planted 2 rows, so I’m not real sure if they’ll pollinate correctly and actually produce ears. We’ll see.
My husband planted 3 different types of carrots. All the seeds were from 2013, so I wasn’t hopeful, but 2 of these 3 types have germinated and started to grow. We’re both pretty excited about those.
We found this growing in the compost pile too. As you can see, it’s taken over and neither of us have it in us to kill these beautiful plants. We pulled one out and put it in the garden earlier. Our plan was to remove the rest of these once the one we took out started growing. But, the one we transplanted didn’t grow. It hasn’t died, but it just won’t grow. So, we decided to leave the these.
There’s a couple of tomatoes in there too. Everything is volunteer, so we’ll let them go and see what happens. This means, of course, we won’t be turning the compost for a while. I guess, that’s okay too.
Later in the year I’ll start planting for fall. We’ll plant things that like the cooler weather like leafy greens, peas and hopefully some broccoli. We’ll just see what grows.
My husband and I have decided to make this garden an experiment. We’ll try things and see what happens and next year we’ll adjust.
In my opinion, this is one of my best DIYs yet. I can’t wait for everything to begin producing. I love the taste of homegrown food. It’s funny how things change as you grow up and get older. I hope my grandkids learn it sooner than I did.
As our garden grows more, I’ll update with new posts. I hope you’ll come back later to see what it looks like.
Are you growing a garden this year? What did you plant? What’s coming up? Do you have pictures, post them below. I’d love to see what your garden looks like. If you’re not growing one, I hope I’ve inspired you to try. Experiment, see what you can grow. You can build on it more next year. Let’s share some ideas so we can all try something new next year.
Thanks for coming by. Until next time –
Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey