Gardening

Our first year of marriage, I made a quarter-hearted attempt to grow a garden. We lived in Osino where the only dirt is dust. We had a patch of dirt about 2'x3' (at best) and it was mostly shaded. Needless to say, I failed. Hopelessly. I've already put this picture on but just for reference, here it is again: our entire garden crop.

Five measly potatoes that didn't even get big enough to taste good. Pathetic.

Needless to say, I was less than enthusiastic to try again. Last year, I shared with my mom and Gretta, the single best gardeners in the intergalactic universe. That was great! Mostly because I looked like this:

And let me tell you, bending over to weed is not easy at that point. So, they spoiled me on all the delicious treats of a thriving garden and this year I decided, since I'm no longer close enough to reap any of their goodness, I had to try again, and fortunately, dumb luck kicked in. 

Most people around here plant cold hardy plants around the end of May and everything else in June, keeping plenty of covers handy for those late season frosts. How did I do things differently you may ask? I planted everything the second week of April and hoped for the best. The strange thing is, I got it! These are pictures of my garden taken several weeks ago, in desperate need of weeding.  

Here you can even see my peas starting to bloom!

This is about the time we started eating some of our lettuce. We'd been eating radishes for a few weeks by this point.

(Don't look at the lawn. This is not a post about my amazing lawn care abilities!)

I'm hoping by next year to get some sort of border around it to help keep the weeds and grass from taking over so badly. 

 

Here are some updated  pictures taken just today of my flourishing, and slightly less weedy garden. (Sorry some are turned the wrong direction. I'm too lazy to fix it.)

My peas have now progressed to pods, lots of them. Soon we'll be eating some, my very favorite part of a garden!

Yesterday I sampled some of the tiny carrots we have while thinning them...not so tasty yet.

 Our lettuce has started getting huge all of a sudden!

These are kinda cheater pictures...I just bought these about a week ago and haven't had a chance to kill them yet but I was pretty impressed by their tiny little tomatoes already starting and the blooms on the squash! 

Blooming potatoes. Hopefully this crop beats our first round! ...Although, it's hard to lose to that...

The corn and the green beans are the only problems I've had. I used some of my mom's old seed and neither grew so I had to get some new seeds and replant. It's a little behind the rest of my garden but still way ahead of the rest of the valley.

Gardening this year has been a really good experience for me to give me some of my confidence back from botching it so bad before... If nothing else we have already eaten some turnips, radishes, lettuce and, if you count it, a few tiny, nasty carrots.