Green Eggs & Dirt

My first round of vegetable gardening was a moderate success filled with good lessons learned.  For example, I will never again plant more than one zucchini at a time, due to their insane production of zucchinis and ability to grow to bohemoth stature.  I finally pulled everything from my first garden up, conditioned the soil, and started again with a few new tricks up my sleeve.

Here is version two of my garden.  The first thing I did was add some new soil to my garden along with compost.  The key ingredient to being a successful organic gardener, from what I understand, is to have good, nutrient rich soil.  Good soil equals healthy plants which are more resistant to pests and disease.  So I bought some good garden soil from my local garden store and sifted some compost into the mix and turned it around with the existing sandy soil.

Next, I added a soaker hose.  A major issue I had with the last garden was finding time to go water. I only had a hose with a spray nozzle so I would have to stand out there for 10 minutes just watering and a lot of the water would just end up running off.  A soaker hose ($15) drips water really slowly so there is no runoff, plus I can turn it on, set a timer for 25 minutes and do other things while my plants get watered.  It’s been a huge help.

Brian made this screen for me, which I use to sift compost from my bin into the garden.  The conundrum I was having was that I have all this great compost but it’s mixed with un-decomposed bits and I wasn’t sure how to separate the finished compost material from the unfinished material. This screen does the trick. We just bought some chicken wire and a couple 1×1 wood pieces from Home Depot. We had Home Depot cut the wood for us so all we had to do was nail it into a square and then tack on the screen.  And voila! Homemade sifter tool.  It works perfectly.

In my garden I have some strawberry plants, donated to me from my generous neighbor who is a seasoned gardener. He was actually the one who finally convinced me to plant some veggies and he’s been very helpful with his gardening tips.  He also shares his veggies and veggie seeds/cuttings with me and I try and share in return (although his garden is a bit more productive than mine!).

I decided to man up and plant some tomatoes as well.  I usually hate tomato plants because they attract so many bugs and grow like weeds.  But I love to have fresh tomatoes in the garden so I decided to give it another go.  This guy is already growing like crazy, but thankfully he’s bug free so far.

Basil is another plant I generally avoid because I usually kill it.  Then again, I’ve never planted it in the ground, only in pots (where I subsequently neglect to water it).  So far, this basil is a happy camper so I’m hoping for the best.

Chard is a vegetable that I’m learning to like (Brian is still accepting his hatred for it, though).  So I planted a couple chard plants.  A cool trick with chard? Sneak it into smoothies (just a few leaves). You don’t notice the taste at all and you get a nutritional boost to your smoothie.

Onion, always a good thing to have.  Another thing that Brian doesn’t care for but I love.  He can get over it.

This jalapeno plant is the last “survivor” from my last garden. I put survivor in quotes because this guy looks far from alive. But he’s not dead yet!  So I’m hoping he will be revived in new soil.

I also have some seedlings that I hope to see pop up any day.  I have peas, broccoli, and more jalapenos in seeds but they haven’t come up yet.

The next decision will be whether or not to expand the garden.  As you can see here, half the area is veggies and half is iceplant. We started small with the veggies so as not to overwhelm ourselves but I’m thinking it’s time to branch out and pull up the iceplant.  TBD, for now…