Garden 2021

This year, I sort of kicked my gardening into a higher gear. Normally, I plan on buying loads of plants from the nursery but this year, I started everything from seed. I also asked my dad to build me a fully enclosed garden (that I designed but he modified because the price of wood was insane - and it's only getting more insane) to keep the squirrels and chipmunks at bay. On top of that, I have two more garden beds and then another mini bed for alpine strawberries and then another mini bed for flowers. The fig tree was moved out of its pot and into the ground, we have two blueberry bushes, the grapes are up on a post, and my cousin gifted us with two pawpaw trees. My dad also built himself a circular garden bed for some random plants, though, the deer have been making it into their daily salad bar buffet so it hasn't been going too hot. My coworker has gifted me with bleeding heart, cat mint, hostas, and loads of other stuff. Our lovely friend Mary has also given us some sedum. And I even "stole" some strawberry runners when we went strawberry picking a last weekend.

We also bought a bunch of new houseplants, which seem to be doing really well, and I've propagated a bunch of existing plants. Also, I've been pretty diligent keeping a gardening journal, especially with lessons learned and companion planting, so I'm hoping that I can call myself a green thumb now.

I'm also spending a few minutes in the garden every day to pick over weeds and I bought a retractable hose and I depleted the compost bin by about two-thirds this year (as opposed to only a quarter) to really supplement the soil in the beds.

So this year, I planted beds in categories. The first bed I've been calling the cruciferous/leafy vegetable garden and it has red leaf lettuce, frisee, kale, broccoli, brussels sprouts, beets, scallions, some English peas, and radish. I also threw in some nasturtium, marigold, and chamomile.

The second bed is the enclosed garden and it's mostly tomatoes and peppers. There's shishito peppers, poblanos, Anaheim chilis, Korean long hot chilis, cherry peppers, jalapeños, habanero, cayenne, fish pepper, and Thai chilis. There's also some dill, cilantro, Genovese basil, and Thai basil. There are 8 San Marzano tomato plants, haricots verts, carrots, and radish. For companion plants, there's borage, marigold, bachelor's button, and calendula. I also had a few English peas in the bed but they got attacked by aphids and right now, only one seems to have the potential to produce any fruit. There are also a handful of volunteer cherry tomato plants from our compost pile.

The third bed is the vining plant bed. It has cucumber, zucchini, and honey nut squash. There are also some haricots verts and a couple tomato plants that are unlikely to survive the rodent brigade. For companion plants, there's borage, bachelor's button, calendula, nasturtium, chamomile, all different varieties of marigolds, and I tried to plant violas but they did not survive.

The strawberry bed is just alpine strawberries with some scallions, borage, and marigold to keep it company and ward off pests.

The flower bed has a mix from Botanical Interests called "save the bees" which includes California poppies, sunflowers, borage, dill, coriander, and a few others that I'm not sure actually survived. I also tried to plant red poppies, which seem to be doing well. The chocolate flower, snapdragon, and gomphrena that I tried to plant don't seem to have survived but time will tell. For now, the bed seems to be somewhat overgrown and overshadowed by the save the bees mix. I also saved some bee balm from a previous year's planting that is flowering and seems to be doing well.

The lavender plant that was in a pot last year survived the winter. I fed it loads of compost and it seems to be doing amazing and there are so many buds. I tried growing lavender from seed and of the 12 to 15 seeds I sprinkled, only one germinated and it took over two months. I had a little more success with rosemary and currently have two little seedlings that seem to be doing pretty well. Those will stay indoors until they're hearty enough to be transplanted outside.

I also drew out a garden planner this year so I'd know exactly where everything went and made garden markers for the first time in a few years. I used to love doing that but recently, I've just been putting more energy towards taking care of the plants. I guess the lingering effects of quarantine made it easy to want to quell my boredom with arts and crafts though.

I also started my seeds in a proper seedling mix and then took time to harden off all my plants properly.

It's really been a joy to watch everything growing and I don't know that I'll be doing another update until maybe next month or into August when we've gotten enough hauls to make it worthwhile. I'm mostly curious as to how many tomatoes we actually end up with this year.

I'm avoiding any of the green coated stakes and cages this year and trying to stick with bamboo and other natural materials. The green coating would always flake off and end up polluting the soil, which I didn't love.

I never really understood how avid gardeners could spend so much time in the garden but I find myself just sitting outside, staring at the plants and now I feel like I'm one of them.

So far, we've already been able to enjoy lots of red leaf lettuce, frisee, a few peas, radishes, loads of herbs, and scallion. I think cucumbers will be ready in another week and maybe the first tomatoes will arrive in the week following.

I need to remind you that I grew everything from seed. Even I'm amazed at myself when I scroll through these photos.

xoxo.