scrappybadger July 20th, 2007
I’m not very good at keeping up with posts on this new blog. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to myself that I was going to blog about something, but life keeps getting in the way. One of the more enjoyable things I’ve been doing is enjoying fresh cucumbers from our garden. Last year we just dug a few holes and planted our tomatoes and one lemon balm plant in the middle of the grass. It was our first attempt to plant any vegetables at this house, so we did it slowly. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time without knowing whether we could get something to grow since I have something of a brown thumb. We were pretty successful with our tomatoes despite the fact that it was really dry last summer. Oh, and two of our plants never really got planted - we sat them in the dirt but never got around to taking them out of the pots. They were resilient and grew out of the bottom of the pots, producing some very nice tomatoes for us even though we treated them so badly. With one successful crop under our belts, we were a bit more ambitious this year. I got a Garden Claw for my birthday last year, and we used it to create a real garden. Back in May I plowed (clawed?) the little patch in our side yard. This is what it looked like when I’d finished half of it:
That bushy thing in the lower right-hand corner is the lemon balm from last year. We planted it primarily to attract bugs that like to eat tomato plants, and it is huge this year. It smells really nice too.
Once I got the rest of the grass cleared away for a little L-shaped patch, I dug out a trench around the edges and created a border with some bricks left in the backyard by the people we rent from.
Those poor, shriveled plants in the corner are lemon balm cuttings. We had to trim that monster back, so we decided to see if they’d transplant. A couple of them came back from the dead; others weren’t so lucky. Here’s what it looked like once we got everything in the ground.
In the leftmost cage is Roma tomatoes; to the right is basil, the next cage is a wilty cucumber plant that quickly sprung back. Next to that is a poblano pepper, Early Girl tomatoes in the corner, next to grape tomatoes, huge ass lemonbalm, and out of the frame to the right are tomatillos and beefsteaks. We like tomatoes.
It was a lot of work doing everything by hand, but we got to smell the neighbor’s jasmine
and when I rested I had a cute dog to look at.
It took a couple of days to get it all done. On the first day we worked until it was too dark to do anything else, and we got to see this nice night sky. Piig noticed it, and pointed it out to me because I have a tattoo like this.
Two months later our garden looks a little jungle-like.
It’s even bigger than Luna.
And the Roma tomatoes are mocking us, looking so yummy yet still so green.
We visit the garden just about every day to see what’s new. I just wish I’d start getting some tomatillos. I really wanted some green salsa this summer.
