Gardening

A Passion for Gardening

What grows in my garden? Just about everything...including weeds, of course! Flowers, lots of them, and vegetables, too.

We moved to our present house just over a year ago. It pleased us both because our former residence was a patio home that had no space for growing things.

Our yard now isn't huge, but I manage to get a lot of things into it. One of the first things, of course, was to put in a vegetable garden. It's not really big; about 4' x 15'. It's amazing how much stuff I got out of it last year, though.

There was a truly horrid looking flower bed in the front of the house, which we worked on quite a bit last year, but was almost as bad after as it was before. So, this year, we really got at it. We got some landscape timbers and built up the 4' strip next to the house to a double layer. The front 4' we built to a single layer and laid down rock. That area is difficult to water and the grass looked awful. So, now I don't have to drag the mower out there any more and it looks pretty good.

We brought in a couple yards of topsoil, but only filled the empty half because I had some perennials in the other side. This fall, I'll dig them, replenish the soil and then replant them and I think it'll look great. The south side is now home to a Chrysler Imperial rose, a Jackmanii Clematis, some Shasta Daisies and Forget-Me-Nots, as well as a young artemisia. I tucked that in front of the Clematis to keep its feet cool and expect the soft silvery grey foliage to offset the purple flowers nicel

So far, only the Daisy has bloomed. The other side has some Iris, which is my favorite, a Euonymous which is new this year, and some annuals I put in for quick color: pansies, snapdragons, dianthus, sweet allysum.

A friend of ours lent us his Mantis tiller and what a great little machine it is! I think we're going to have to invest in one next year. With it, I tilled up the garden, adding some topsoil and compost. Of course, we had to rotate our crops, so no tomatoes in the garden this year. So I worked that little Mantis all along the back fence and part way down the side, to a width of about 20 inches. This area is now populated with tomatoes, peppers, basil, dill and parsley.

The fence on the south side is home to two hardy Concord Seedless grapevines. Brian loves grape jam and it's hard to come by Concords in this area, for some reason. So I thought we might as well grow our own. The fence is chain link, so it can support them nicely.

The garden this year is planted with 2 varieties of lettuce, beets, carrots, 3 types of beans and pickling cucumbers. Tucked in the south end are some volunteer borage from last year, a nice clump of chives,some thyme and some garlic. I really don't use the Borage, Thyme or Chives, but they're very pretty.

I've tucked pickling cucumbers in many spots around the yard. The vines are only about a foot or so long, so they're really don't take much room. It's always difficult, or so it seems to me, to find the size I like for dills, so growing them myself seems to be the answer. I prefer small, straight pickles, about 3 to 4 inches long. Last year, I had about 8 plants and while they produced well, it would take several days of harvesting to have enough to make a jar. So this year, I'm hoping to have enough plants that I can pick about a quart every day or two.

Last year, we had 3 Roma, an Early Girl and an Ace tomato. They produced very well for us. Brian's particularly fond of tomatos and tomato products. In fact, he had been bragging on a friend's salsa, so I had him get the recipe. It's so good that this year we doubled our tomato planting and added the garlic, peppers and parsley. I canned over 50 pints of tomatos last year off our few plants, and plan to do even more this year.

Having finally invested in a pressure canner, I plan to put up lots of beans this year, too. I put in several of the Burpee's Purple ones...if you've never tried them, you should. They're pretty plants, bush-type. The upper surfaces of the leaves are a deep green while the underside is purplish. The flowers are lilac colored and the beens ripen to a deep purple. They turn green when they're cooked and are very tasty.

Also in the garden are some French fillets for eating fresh and some other bush-type green ones that can well. Tucked in a couple places along the fence are some Scarlet Runners. They grow very quickly and are great for coverage. The flowers are, true to their name, a vivid scarlet and the beans are large and tasty.

Another new thing this year is Sunflowers. I've always thought they were pretty but have never grown any. So I poked some in the ground next to the Scarlet Runners and will let them climb up them. When the heads start to ripen, I'll cover them with paper bags to keep the birds from them until they dry. Then this winter we can put them out for the birds to enjoy.

Spring of 2001 has been a strange one here. We had some late storms which dumped lots of snow on us and since then it's been unseasonably hot. Gardening has, of necessity, been restricted to early mornings and in the evening after the sun loses some of its strength. Still, what's uncomfortable for us is great for growing things! Our main task just now is weeding and water, water, water!