On Monday, we had the first fruits of our gardening labors. Some of the mesclun was ready to pick:
Mesclun 4-27-09
I snipped about 4 servings worth of the greens:
Salad 04-27-09
And dressed it with a vinaigrette made with Archer Farms Strawberry Basil Balsamic Vinegar. Yum.
Dressed Salad 4-27-09
On April 11th (34 days), I thinned out the spinach and mesclun. On April 19th (42 days), I thinned out the carrots.
On April 21st, I planted 4 tomato plants (2 Big Beef, 2 Roma) in the second bed. I also planted 1 tomato plant in a container.
Roma Tomato Plant 4-22-09
The carrots and onions are looking good:
Carrots 4-22-09
Onions 4-22-09
But the thinned spinach isn’t looking so good:
Spinach 4-22-09
And the mesclun is about ready to become salad:
Mesclun 4-22-09
From The National Weather Service:
This Afternoon: Mostly cloudy, with a high near 37. Northwest wind between 21 and 23 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph.
Tonight: Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly clear, with a low around 29. West northwest wind 14 to 17 mph decreasing to between 6 and 9 mph. Winds could gust as high as 23 mph.
Spinach 3-22-09
Mesclun 3-22-09
Carrots 3-22-09
And two types of lettuce picked up at the OSU-OKC Farmers’ Market on Saturday:
Farmers' Market Lettuce
Planted on March 8, 2009:
Carrots - Petite ‘n Sweet (Burpee Signature – Lowes)
Lettuce - Mesclun – Sweet Salad Mix (Burpee – Home Depot)
Spinach - Bloomsdale Long-Standing – Savoy Leaf (Burpee – Home Depot)
Onions - White Granex (Bonnie – Home Depot)
2 bags compost, 3 bags soil, mixed in with pre-tilled native dirt
I went outside yesterday to water my garden patch when I noticed the first signs of new life:
Mesclun Sprouts 3-16-09
Some (as yet unidentified) portion of the mesclun mix has started to sprout. Now that life has begun, the real challenge of maintaining life gets underway.
I woke up Saturday morning eager to begin my inaugural day as a backyard farmer. To start, I installed one of the raised beds I built the previous weekend:
Raised Garden Beds - One Installed, One Not
I filled it with dirt and began planting my onions and sowing carrot, lettuce, and spinach seeds. With everything in the ground, I took some close-up photos of the onions:
Onions (w/ Nanook & Sammy)
All was good. Now I just needed to water, weed, and wait. For now, I could relax. I still needed to prepare the other bed for the tomatoes and peppers. But, I still have a few weeks before those go in the ground.
And then… (four hours later):
Dog Destroyed Bed
I look outside and find one of my dogs, Sammy, lying in the middle of the garden bed. There are dug-up holes all over the bed. Half of the planted onions are missing. And the seeds are scattered all over the place. I was livid. Another dog, Dexy, sensed my anger and was eager to jump inside the enclosure and do my bidding, Michael Vick style. But, alas, a ruined garden is no reason to bury one of my dogs.
The Guilty
A couple of glasses of wine later and I had resolved to replant the next morning. Instead of a disaster, it was an opportunity. An opportunity to replace the 2-foot rabbit fence with a 4-foot fence. An opportunity to incorporate better soil and compost into the bed. I was thankful that my garden was destroyed mere hours after its planting rather than mere hours before the first harvest.
So the next morning, I started again. I bought some fencing materials, more seeds, and more dirt. I dug up the garden bed using the dirt to fill in other holes in the yard. Then, I ripped up the inadequate rabbit fence and put up the sturdier (and hopefully adequate) 4-foot fencing. And for the second time in as many days, I filled the garden bed with dirt, planted onions, and sowed seeds.
Replanted Bed
Revised current garden plan:
Spring 09 Plan - Version 2
Already I’m second-guessing my previous plans and identifying the multitude of ways that next year’s gardening will be different. Starting seeds, for example. But I’m not going to completely second-guess myself out of all the green thumb confidence I’ve thus far banked.
The only change–and it’s really only an amendment–is that I’m thinking about making my garden patch into a couple of raised beds. It’ll be some more upfront work and cost, but hopefully it’ll pay off in the long run.
I’ve come to this decision based on the latest episode of You Bet Your Garden, in which a caller was referred to a previous question dealing with First Time Veggie Gardens. That question, in turn, referred to another dealing with raised garden beds.
Spring '09 Vegetable Garden Plan
It’s obviously subject to change, as I actually gain some knowledge about this whole gardening thing.
If the weather is nice this weekend, I plan on turning some of my compost (and perhaps a little manure) into the dirt and otherwise preparing the ground to start sowing. I might also go ahead and get some of the seeds I’ll be needing. This go around I’m just going to go with seeds from Home Depot (assuming they have what I’m looking for). Perhaps, I’ll go mail-order/online the next time around.
I don’t know if Sarah and I will have the time and perseverance to keep a vegetable garden going. I don’t know if it’ll save money in the long run; I don’t know how tasty the food will be. Nevertheless, we’re giving it a shot. If it turns out to be a failed yet fun backyard science experiment, then I’ll still be pretty happy.
We’ve grown various herbs in containers for the past few years. We’ve dabbled in parsley, chives, basil, rosemary, and mint. Last year, in addition to the herbs, we tried a few lettuce plants and a few Early Girl tomato plants in containers as well. The results were neither particularly dramatic nor disastrous.
For this year, we’ve decided to start a small vegetable garden in the backyard. Last November, I dug up this 6.5′ x 8′ plot in the backyard. Then I put up some rabbit fence to keep the dogs out. This past weekend, I put up another smaller garden fence around the whole thing to keep Nanook’s “liquid nitrogen” out of the garden.
Backyard Plot
So that’s where we’re at. This blog is a bit of an experiment too. I’m not sure if it’ll just be a garden journal or what. We’ll just have to wait and see…