In The Garden

 The Beginning

Mid-Summer

When Mother's Day rolls around I want to grow something! To me it signifies the end of stifling winter and sunshine and green is what I crave. A couple years ago I bought a honeysuckle plant for Mother's Day to grow outside our door. I wanted to smell it as I came in and out of our home. This year for Mother's Day I got a load of supplies for our garden plot. Gardening is therapeutic... and man did I need some therapy as I became more and more pregnant....growing right along with my little garden. Due to inability to sleep you could often find me outside working in my small garden as the sun was coming up and soaking up the quiet.

During my childhood my father often had a garden. We didn't contribute very much to it's maintenance but I must have caught on somewhat because some gardening abilities come naturally to me while the rest comes through research. This year I'm documenting what I have learned so I continue to grow as a gardener.

TOMATOES:
I planted multiple different kinds of tomatoes this year, Roma's, Grape, Jet Setters and Beef. I wish I would have taken pictures of the garden at the end of the season because the grape tomatoes were very impressive. I had one plant and they spread throughout the garden. I would definitely plant them again because of their output. Once they started producing I would bring back a sandwich bag full of them whenever I went out. It was nice having a variety of tomatoes on hand but I would not plant as many if I had a small plot again...it became a lot of maintenance to avoid them becoming a tomato plant jungle.

One thing I feel like I mastered this year was watering. I realized two things...when leaves start turning a yellowish color they are getting too much water (this goes for all plants) and when they start to wilt they are not getting enough. It's all about balance. This year I observed more and noticed that some plants only needed water once a week while others needed water almost every day. I would water individual plants accordingly. Paying attention to temperatures and weather forecasts was also important for water control. If it is going to be very hot I would water more in the morning or late evenings before the heat hit. If it is supposed to rain I would not water at all. Tomatoes like hot and humid conditions. A general rule is they like the soil to be kept moist but not waterlogged making sure you water around the roots.

Something that was new to me this year was pruning and it made a HUGE difference in my tomatoes. I constantly had other gardeners coming up to me and asking me advise on their tomatoes. There should be one distinct stem up the middle and I staked the one stem up straight. The trick is that you only allow 4 to 5 fruit bearing tresses to grow from the main stem.  Pinch out any additional side shoots leaving the top shoot intact. Be aware of suckers which grow in the V space of the main stem and branches...pinch these out ASAP.  Pruning directs energy to the fruit.

Additional Tips: Roma tomatoes do not need pruning or staking because they are bred to grow compact. Also, remove all the yellow leaves on tomato plants to prevent disease.

 SUMMER SQUASH (Zucchini): 
Luckily I had enough experience with Zucchini growing up to know that I could only fit one Zucchini plant in our garden and it would provide us more than enough squash!

Again, pruning was the new thing this year. This really helped with the excessive growth of squash. After 4-6 fruit have set you can start pruning. Use a knife to cut bigger leaves that are closer to the base of the pant leaving all others. DO NOT trim any stems. A good rule of thumb is trimming 1 out of 3 leaves on the plant. Again, this directs energy to the fruit.

Additional Tip: The leaves on squash can develop powdery mildew if they get to much water on the leave whether it's due to watering or rain. Try to trim these leaves or you can spray weekly with a mix of 1 part milk to 9 parts water.

Red Pepper

I'm pretty proud of this red pepper. It slowly turned fully red after what seemed like weeks. I made a red pepper sauce with it right away. It's really the only pepper I used. We use a lot of red pepper in our cooking so it is too bad that I was only able to yield one red pepper...I would like to grow more plants next time and figure out what I was doing wrong!

PEPPERS: 
I didn't learn a whole lot about peppers this year but honestly I wasn't that invested. Kellen really wanted a lot of peppers (which he never used) and tomatillos...neither are very expensive in the store and didn't seem very smart to grow but we were experimenting. Maybe my lack of interest led to the failure of the peppers and tomatillos... or maybe it really was the weather. At least we yielded some peppers unlike the tomatillos which grew bushy and looked promising but the husks never filled out...they may be a do-over crop.

There were a couple of things I did learn. Peppers (like most plants) need the soil around the base tilled regularly to avoid bugs making homes. A couple of times I did not get to this fast enough and I noticed bugs making their residence. Be careful when you do till because their roots are really shallow. Also, peppers like to have the soil moist but not drenched. It seemed counter-intuitive to me but peppers don't seem to like heat. Mine flourished when the days dropped into the 80's...which did not leave very much time for high volumes of production.

BASIL:

The basil was my pride and joy. One of my main motivations for gardening is to have a huge basil crop in order to have fresh pesto year-round. I got closer to my goal this year!

I learned that there is two huge tricks to growing healthy basil plants...one, they don't need much water. I would let the soil almost completely dry out before I would water it again. I would say every 3 days or even up to a week without water. Second, pinching out any flowers that appear. This is where I can use some improvement as I did not have the time to invest in the proper amount of pinching! Next time I would just pull of the entire top to prevent them from flowering and cultivate larger leaves. I started a few from seed and they did not do well do to bugs. Next time around I'll just work with plants at the beginning of the season.

Also, make sure you pick a few leaves off a number of plants rather than all off one. Making sure you harvest the top most leaves first. This year I would harvest enough to make a batch of pesto and then next harvest I would freeze it for winter. I also had a bug problem with the basil that I will have to learn how to manage better next time around.

I also tried Oregeno, Thyme, Cilantro and Bush Beans. The Oregano I would plant again because we actually used it, it was low maintenance and I think it would do well as a undergrowth in a flower garden. Thyme seemed kind of worthless because I don't like Thyme very much and it did not do well.  Cilantro was fun because it grew so fast from seed. The problem with cilantro is that it does not last very long before it goes to seed and is pretty cheap in stores. But it would be cool to have fresh cilantro always on hand in the backyard. Kellen and my sister thought it tasted much better fresh. If I grew cliantro again I would plant it every couple of weeks for a couple of months in order to always have a bunch. The Bush Beans grew a bit from seed and then slowly died off due to bugs and general lack of knowledge. They are a do-over crop because I love me some green beans!

KID TIP:

Leah wanted to water the plants every day. So in order to avoid over-watering everything I planted a few flowers (marigolds....which actually ward off lots of different bugs) on the outside of the garden so she could water to her hearts desire!