Farmer Brown
/As you know we moved into a rental home earlier this year - an actual house with a yard and everything. Dang, we're so grown-up now. Having a yard gave us the opportunity to have a garden, and better yet there was a empty garden bed. It was screaming for us to plant veggies (not literally, that would be weird). So, we headed to the garden store, got our hands dirty, and started a garden.
We started out by hitting up Swanson's Nursery. We grabbed a cart and got some starter plants and some fertilizer. Generally, a good way to start, right?
When we got home, Josh was good enough to do the digging and fertilizer job. That's my macho man!
Then he came up with the idea of doing a grid system. He's pretty clever, too!
We planted all sorts of goodies including spinach, kale, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions, strawberries, zucchini, parsley, thyme, and sage. Off in another area we planted basil and rosemary as well.
Once it was all safely in the ground, of course, we had to let it grow.
Can you identify what everything is? I hope you can at least guess the onions above.
The weather turned pretty hot here for a few weeks so it was a struggle to keep things alive. Some made it, some didn't. We learned that when the weather gets hot, spinach can "bolt" - not running away bolt, but just grow upward and flower. Basically, it was not edible (Sad Trombone). Our strawberries didn't quite make it either but the plant lives on so they may still grow something. But sadly our tiny pepper dropped off the plant.
On the bright side, we got some tasty kale, lettuce, zucchini, and carrots. Seriously, the zucchini...it was massive. And there is more zucchini in-the-works. Yay! Here's me picking the carrots. Ta Da!
It was a good first harvest for us first time gardeners. I used our kale in a yummy pasta dish, the zucchini we grilled on 4th of July, and the lettuce we used on turkey burgers. Yum yum freshness!
I'd like to dedicate the garden success, though, to Josh. He diligently waters every morning. I think I watered it like twice. I'm not the greatest gardener, but together we did pretty good. Maybe next time we'll feel brave enough to start from seeds instead of starters. We'll see.
