Fresh From the Garden

Our gardening adventure has been a big success this year so far.  Especially over last year.  Last years garden was a hot mess.  Seriously.  You name it and we did it wrong.  First mistake was the location of the bed.  I watched the back yard for weeks charting which areas were sunny and for how long.  We decided on a location, then Bryan got to work building a bed (oops, I just realized Bryan built this garden bed before the porch project so technically the porch was his second building project).  Shortly after the bed was built, a tree in our neighbors yard went crazy (this was our first spring in our house so we didn't realize just how much of the tree shaded our yard).  Ultimately, half of our yard was in shade.  Of course, it would be the half in which our garden was located.

Second mistake was the bed itself.  While I requested a simple raised garden bed, Bryan thought it would be better if he raised it off the ground a couple of feet to make it easier to work the garden (can you tell someone was excited to build something?!).  While excellent in theory, it turns out it requires a lot of soil to fill a six foot by three foot bed that is eight inches deep.  With the cost of soil quickly adding up, I decided that it wasn't necessary to fill it completely.  HUGE MISTAKE!  What I failed to realize is that over time, soil will settle and by the start of summer, my bed was seriously lacking in soil.  It seems so obvious now but at the time, I was ready to plant my garden and taking another trip to the garden center to buy more soil was cramping my style.

So, we started out with a great looking garden box that was easy on the back and was a great barrier in keeping weeds out.  Great, right?  Weeding this garden bed was a breeze.  However, pests were attracted to it like moths to a flame.  Check out this critter that munched on the few tomatoes that actually grew: 

This big guy is a tobacco hornworm--you do not want him near your tomatoes!

The shady conditions made for a happy home for many pests.  So, learning from last year mistakes, we modified our garden this year.  First we moved its location to the sunnier side of the yard and second we built a raised bed that sits on the ground.  In building it this way, all we have to do is fortify our existing soil with a healthy layer of good soil but the roots will always have somewhere to go resulting in healthier, happier and stronger plants.

March 2010

 June 2010

It's not as pretty as last year but so far, we've eaten two dinners from it plus we've had lots of herbs for sauces and lots of mint for mojitos and mint tea.

We made fried green tomato sandwiches from these beauties.

And last night for dinner, we dug these up:

If you have not grown potatoes, I highly recommend it!  This is the result of four plants and I dug them up early because my plants weren't getting enough sun.  Imagine the yield if they were in a better location.  Plus potatoes are great because they stay fresh for a very long time and are easy to freeze for the winter months.

Last nights dinner fresh from garden:

Garden roasted potatoes with garden onion and garden rosemary
Roasted brussels sprouts (from grocery store--but I will be planting some for a fall harvest)
Salad: grocery store lettuce, garden tomatoes (beefsteak and cherry), garden onion and garden basil

It may not look pretty but it was dee-licious!  How's your garden growing this year?  Anybody else enjoying the fruits of their labor?  I've never had potatoes so creamy or onions so sweet and everybody should know the delight in eating a tomato still warm from the sun.  Oh, and if you have any gardening tips please share!  I need all the tips I can get.