Garden Delight

I've worked in a garden since I was a little kid. It's definitely in my blood because my maternal grandfather ("Granddaddy") owned his own plant nursery and my mom is a gardener extraordanaire. Many a summer day was spent weeding, picking beans and chopping up turnip and collard greens to blanch and freeze for the winter. When you're a teenager, it's the last thing you want to be doing....standing at the sink rinsing icky bugs off of big, pokey leaves that you don't like to eat anyway. Doing that certainly wasn't the reason I love gardening today. I doubt that my mom had me help with the garden harvest because she hoped to instill in me a love for plants or an appreciation for the work and care it takes to feed a family. I think she wanted us to spend time together and she needed the help! (Thanks mom for convincing me that leafy greens are good for your skin, though!)

It wasn't until I was a college senior at Utah State University that I thought to grow a garden on my own. I dug out a tiny little patch in an empty lot next to the house where my basement apartment was. I don't even remember what I grew....probably the usual: beans, tomatoes, maybe corn. What I do remember was trying to figure out the City of Logan's irrigation system so that my baby plants would get water and not shrivel up in the dry Utah summer. That was truly a learning experience! The city had set up the system probably in the 19th century and had established a schedule for when water could be diverted from the main canal to your plot by turning the sluice gate (a feat in itself!) Not knowing about the schedule of odd days north/south streets, even days east/west streets, I was reprimanded one day by a somewhat prickly farmer in a classic pick-up. "Today's not your day, young lady." I wasn't sure what he meant and said "Excuse me?" "The water. It's not your day." He then explained the system and the schedule for me. You can be sure I never made the mistake again!

This is our third full summer in this house and third summer of vegetable and flower gardening. It is by far the most satisfying activity for me outside of interacting with people. Here's what's growing this year: to our regulars of radishes, carrots, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, and sugar peas, we added strawberries, kale, cucumbers, yellow squash, hot peppers, pumpkin, and 5 types of herbs (peppermint, thyme, basil, fennel, and cilantro). My smart, willing DH made the taller garden box out of cedar for our first year of veggie gardening. Last year I thought it would be a good idea to have a compost bin after reading in the Sierra Club magazine how much energy it takes to clarify water from our use of garbage disposals. He made a wonderful bin but we decided it was too big and not efficient enough. So this year we created a plan together for an additional garden box with a built-in compost bin (which you can see on the right side of the picture above) and herb plot. We got some amazing mushroom compost from the near-by nursery and paired with a number of good, solid rains, you can see how the growth exploded! Of course, squash and cucumbers were the original prototypes for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers, so there's no surprise there.

Happy Summer!