This year’s garden
April 29th, 2014 by Karen
There’s little more satisfying than starting the garden every year. It’s the sign that we’ve shuffled off winter and most of the dreary overcast days that seem to hang on interminably.
This year, we finally planted our third planter box. We built all three boxes two years ago and have planted them in stages the past couple of years. The first year, we planted lettuce, spinach, beans, eggplant, cilantro, celery, and zucchini. Everything grew, but we discovered that the lettuce and spinach were more hassle than they were worth…fighting off invaders was irritating and the slugs destroyed more than we actually ate. So the second year, we skipped the leafy greens while planting two of the boxes. In the first, we planted bell peppers, chili peppers, squash, a striped zucchini, and basil. For the second box, we decided to try our hands at cantaloupe and watermelon. Everything was a success, except the zucchini and squash which had the worst yields I’ve ever seen. Normally with just a plant or two, anyone would be drowning in zucchini, but I think all season we had 3. That’s it.
In selecting plants for this year, we returned to a tried and true zucchini variety, along with the same selections of squash, basil, bell and chili peppers as last year. We missed the eggplant from two years ago so we re-added that and while the beans grew well, we decided to plant peas instead. We added two varieties of tomatoes this year too. I’m the only one that likes them raw, so I only planted one heirloom variety, and I planted three Roma tomatoes specifically for canning as we use a LOT of tomato sauce and paste through the year.
We also planted one of my most favorite things, strawberries! I’ve always loved these sweet little packages of spring deliciousness wrapped in bright red. When I was little, every morning before I had breakfast, my mom would hand me a bowl and send me out the back door to rifle through our two massive strawberry beds for ripe berries. We’d cut them up over Cheerios or Rice Chex and the leftovers my mom would turn into freezer jam. Sometimes, she made homemade strawberry shortcake or paired them with a homemade angel food cake.
When we first moved to this house, we planted a row of strawberries, and they were good for a season, but after that the quality was terrible and it was very disappointing. I’m very optimistic about this year’s crop though for two reasons: we’ve planted them in a raised bed which so far has kept them pest free and we planted Sequoias which are a very hearty variety. Plus, we’ve had the plants in for about two weeks and we’re already getting delicious fruit!
Later this week, we’re planting pumpkins as part of a project of a friend of mine to see if the pink pumpkin she grew last year will breed true. I’m super excited!
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