Sunday, February 8, 2009

Gardening at Night

I'm gardening, but not at night. I just happen to like the song. It is the time of year to start thinking about what I want to plant in my garden, though. When I first broached the idea of starting a garden with my husband four years ago, he wasn't exactly thrilled with my suggestion. He said, "Fine, but it belongs to you and the kids. I don't want to mess with it." So the kiddos and I started with this space:


Guess what happened? My husband loved the garden and added this area the next year:


So now we have a larger garden than I ever imagined, and we really enjoy it. I never thought that I would actually like having a garden, but it is completely relaxing and rewarding to walk through the space and harvest what we have grown. I have even learned how to use a tiller and have a not-so-lovely scar behind my left knee from a run-in with the apparatus last summer.

We have enjoyed some notable successes- green beans, lima beans, and tomatoes; some big failures- very thin carrots that never grew more than two inches long and lettuce that closely resembled clover; battled a mole that bit our corn off at the base; chased squirrels who swiped our pumpkins and watermelons; and tolerated some so-so producers that I am not sure about trying again, like peas and okra.

I'm getting a bit bored with the garden, though, and want to switch things up this year. Earlier today I dug out my favorite gardening book (Yes, I know it's a children's book, but that is about my gardening comfort level) for some inspiration.


After perusing Green Thumbs, perhaps we'll try a bean tent. Car Guy would love that. I would also like to grow some herbs that I could use when cooking. I would really, really love to devote part of the space to a flower garden so I could keep cut flowers in the house all summer long. Our lilies look great, but they make a huge mess if I bring them in the house.

Please let me know if you have any great gardening ideas or tricks. We could use some inspiration over here.




1 comment:

  1. We had a fun new addition last year. We planted red potatoes. They were so so fun to dig up!!! In fact we still have some!
    The foliage is pretty and you will know when they are ready when it begins to get a bit limp. Enjoy!1

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