Week 40 – How does your garden grow?

My new garden is growing!  Gardening is one of a few activities that make me feel especially “green,” mostly because the entire process involves getting my hands in dirt itself.  If you recall, we put in a garden in our previous rental house last April, building raised beds and hauling 2 yards of dirt, until I had four garden beds waiting to be filled.  While I’ve grown up with gardens my whole life, last year’s garden was my very first real garden – beyond containers and pots, that is.  Our plants grew remarkably well, so much so that one of the few sad things about leaving our old house behind and moving into our new place was having to let fall plants like tomatoes, gourds, and pumpkins go to waste.

We were left with two options – leave the beds at the rental, intact, or shovel out the dirt and move the beds.  Well, we decided we hadn’t built these beds for nothing, so I shoveled those 2 yards of dirt back out and we moved our 4 raised beds in a U-Haul.  It was a giant pain, but I’m so glad we did it.  (Now, of course, I thinking ahead to the moment when we buy a house and I have to decide whether or not to move the beds one final time). 

Over Spring Break, Mom and I shoveled another 2 yards of soil and positioned these beds in a full-sun spot in our yard.  Here’s the finished result:

Facing out the back of our house toward our shed - 4 garden beds waiting to be filled!

Toward the back left of the photo, you might be able to see something I’m pretty excited about.  The property came with a ready-made gardening area.  Problem is, the full thing doesn’t get sun all day long.  Nevertheless, we turned over all the soil, and we’re going to keep our fingers crossed that the corn and pumpkins I plant get just enough sun to produce.  We also installed a pea trellis, so I can grow my most favorite vegetables, snow peas.

The pea trellis.

  The inside of the house has turned into a little plant factory, as all my veggies and flowers get a head start before being planted in the ground.  I’ve discovered this year that starting plants indoors and recycling go hand in hand.  Take this neat greenhouse contraption, for example (I found this idea in a magazine and love it) – a used plastic chicken container (recyclable # 5 plastic).  An empty egg carton was cut in half and now has citrus seeds started in it.  Cool, huh?

An empty chicken container and part of an egg carton double as a makeshift greenhouse.

In all, here’s what we’re growing this year: Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, corn, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumber, carrots, radishes, loofas, horseradish, onions, potatoes, strawberries, and some assorted herbs and flowers.  This is, by the way, inside of a tiny little town lot.  I’ll update with pictures as the garden grows, but already, seeds are sprouting both inside and out.