Our garden at the town house yielded a nice crop of tomatoes from three plants and four (yes, count them -- four!) ears of delicious corn. We were disappointed about the corn, but you know what they say -- you have to plant a fairly good-sized patch in order to have much corn, and we didn't. Still, I think we're making progress. When I planted my first garden at the Clarkston house in 2005, all the tomatoes had blossom end rot. Gradually we have improved the soil and this year when I planted the tomatoes, I filled the holes with potting soil and also fertilized. It seemed to help a lot. Sadly, the zucchini plants were thought to be weeds . . . But one large green tomato accidentally knocked from the vine became a delicious loaf of green tomato spice bread.
As we move into late summer / fall, I'm wondering about a fall garden. Years ago a nursery employee told me, "People just don't realize it, but you can have a fall garden here." I don't think she was talking about the Gilbert country where the farm is located. As I mentioned before, it could freeze here in early September. And then there's that whole thing with the days growing shorter. But -- once again I'm trying. When I cleaned the corn out of the raised bed last week, I planted two varieties of carrots. I found the seeds in my "seed can." The packets were dated 2000 and 2001. I figure I'm not out much if they don't come up.
Perhaps you also remember the book / record, "The Carrot Seed." The mother says, "Mothers know a lot of things little boys can't know, and Mother knows your carrot seed may never, never grow." The big brother is not so diplomatic: "Nya, nya, it won't come up. Nya, nya, it won't come up -- it won't come up, it won't come up . . . " But today I see they are coming up.
1 comment:
We used the Square Foot Gardening method to plant our tiny crop. This summer has been a bust for us, though, because of the drought. The plants really don't seem to like our city water. Usually we can get some zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes but not this year. ALL of our plants just produced ONE fruit before dying off. It really is quite sad.
Our winter garden--filled with greens--usually does much better because it gets *some* rain but we'll see how it works out this winter.
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