Lani Can Suck It; OR How Our Garden Grows

One of the last items to check off of our Summer List was to plant tomatoes and lettuce in our little side planter area.  It's a good size planter, at least 4 ft. deep by 12 ft. long, and South facing so it gets lots of nice sun.  So I enlisted the hubs to tear out all of the agapanthus that was uselessly filling this spot and cleaned it up so it looked like this

I added about 4 bags of this

 We carefully plotted out our plants, and got to work

in less than two weeks I am overjoyed with our results.  Remember back in March when I was all pissy because we had lost our community garden plot when we moved?  Well eat your heart out mean old Lani, because looky what I have here, right outside my very own kitchen door!

I started at the left with some herbs including thyme, parsley, basil and sage.  The red stalk of flowers are Yarrow and are well known for repelling some bad insects and attracting ladybugs, which eat aphids.  I also planted a border of marigolds for color and for their tendency to also attract ladybugs.  I despise aphids, so  take whichever precautions I can to combat them.

Next to the herb garden are 1 zucchini plant (believe me, you only need 1 to feed a family) and 1 pumpkin plant.  Again, you only need 1 of these as well.

Of course we had to throw in some tomatoes, a beefsteak variety and yellow golden cherry type.  Taylor was drawn to the Japanese eggplant, so we threw in one of these as well.

I love peppers, so planted an unusual miniature chocolate bell pepper and a golden yellow bell.

And to round out any good garden, we had to have plenty of lettuce.

If you are new to gardening, I encourage you to give lettuce a try because it is almost fool proof.  I have never had a bad experience trying to grow lettuce and there is just something so "naturey" about going out and picking your own lettuce.  These pictures were taken 5 days ago and since then the lettuce you see above is all touching.  It's growing by leaps and bounds and, once I harvest this bounty, I can just plant some more all year round.  That's the beauty of lettuce!

This time around since I was getting such a late start, I did fill my garden entirely with starter plants, as opposed to using seeds.  There are things such as beets, lettuce, chard and squash that I usually have very good luck with when started from seeds, actually they seem to thrive even better.  I just didn't want to risk their growth being stunted if we should start to see a heat spell come on.  Typically you would want to plant your seeds by May at the latest.  I figured either way though, our garden should turn out okay since this summer has been so gosh darned mild.  2 weeks in, I think I'm right!

When choosing plants at the nursery, there are a couple of things you want to be aware of:
1. You don't want to necessarily choose the largest plant with fruit already growing.  It's more ideal to just choose a smaller, sturdy looking plant, and let the growing and fruit bearing happen in your actual soil at home.  Larger plants may tend to go into shock once removed from their pots and transferred to your soil at home.
2. When choosing a plant, give it a squeeze and see if the soil feels loose, or is it tight and hard?  If it's tight, it may be root-bound and look like this:

Try to avoid this because typically the roots are so tightly wound together that they will have a hard time loosening up and grabbing hold in your soil.  When you transfer the plant into the soil, gently try to loosen up and unwind the roots so they have a better chance of survival.  This Swiss Chard was one of the last things I grabbed and I was loosing my powers of observation as two screaming kids went barreling down the nursery aisles with the flat bed cart.

Well friends, these have been our adventures in gardening over the last two weeks.  I do slightly miss my roomy 500 square foot garden plot I once had, but I don't miss the crazy Gustapo.  It has been so nice to just walk outside my door and water at my leisure instead of having to hop in a car.  The kids love watching the daily progress of our little garden as well.  Do any of you have a little spot in your yard for a vegetable garden?  What do you grow there and do you have any tips for me?  I'd love to know...

Happy Gardening Friends!