My Best Garden Ever.....And A Confession

So so many wonderful veggies every day.  I'm loving this.  I have the right amount of everything, which comes from years of learning from mistakes.  It's ironic because there almost wasn't a garden this year.  Like many people with kids, the spring months are insane.  If you have a graduating senior it becomes even more ridiculous and I was busy going to end of year banquets, concerts, etc. 

  There were years in the distant past where I would grow all of my tomato plants and many other things from seed.

It was a fun little project and would net me so many tomato plants that one year I loaded them up in a wagon, sent out a Facebook blast what I was doing and I walked around the neighborhood giving out my baby tomato plants.  But here's the problem:  Even though I started those tomato plants in late Winter, they still were pretty tiny when it was time to plant them outside.   By time they were producing a LOT of tomatoes, it was time for the first frost.  After all that work, my tomato harvest was ok, but not fantastic.

MY TOMATO CHEAT IDEA

What I do now and what I did this year when I finally was done with graduation festivities and could catch up on the delayed planting of my garden, is I went to a local big box discount store and bought the biggest tomato plants I could find, that were already staked and ready to go.  I didn't go to a fancy nursery.   I got 5 big tomato plants and other vegetable plants and planted them.  I have tomatoes a good month and half before I normally would get them.  I probably spent the same amount of money and I am enjoying a prolific harvest.  

I won't lie.  I enjoyed growing them from seed, and as my kids all head off to college and I have more time again, I probably will be starting a lot of plants from seed.   However, I will probably focus more on certain types of plants that worked better, like coleus, impatiens, and for my veggies like tomatoes will continue to purchase sizable established plants that might already have blossoms. 

Here's a rundown of what I did:

Cucumbers:  Planted seeds in garden

Tomatoes:  Purchased plants

Peppers:  Purchased plants

Green beans:  Planted seeds in garden

Lettuce:  Planted seeds right in garden

Spinach:  Planted seeds in garden

I feel like I'm forgetting some so when I remember I'll post again.  

So there you have it.  The truth.  Not everyone has unlimited time to have a garden and it's ok to cheat.  I think a lot of people, probably most, do this anyway, but to me it seemed like I was somehow cutting corners and not being a true gardener.  I wanted an authentic garden, that was all original down to each and every seed.  It's unrealistic and I wonder how many people don't have a garden because they think it's complicated and that you have to do all that work when basically you can plop a bunch of plants in the ground, water them, and have fabulous results. 

Growing Cucumbers

Like usual, I wasn't overly concerned with the directions on the cucumber seed packet, even though I had never grown cucumbers before.  Yup.  I'm a gardening rebel.   I planted probably 10-12 seeds spanning the width of my square foot garden.  I knew it was a vine and that the plan was to go upright, and I had some ideas I had seen on Pinterest.  I am not into overly labor intensive plans or gardens, and my ideas looked pretty simple.  I had seen some vegetable trellises made from pvc, but once my husband saw the pics I showed him, he took some metal pipe and with some pipe bending tool he had, he constructed this in about 10 minutes.  I used twine to give my cukes something to grow on and that was it.

Cucumbers have been one of the most enjoyable vegetables I've ever grown, and I can't believe this is my first time.  It has been a summer of drinking cucumber/lemon/mint-from-the-garden water (again thank you Pinterest!).   We've all been eating cucumbers regularly with my latest favorite being cucumber sandwiches made with cream cheese mixed with powdered ranch dressing mix or with various herbs from my garden.  My mom always made canned bread and butter pickles which are amazing, but being time challenged, I want to try one of the delicious refrigerator pickle recipes I've been seeing everywhere.

Garden Bounty

So after ignoring this blog for over 4 years, I'm back.  I am having the best garden ever, and being blessed with a little more free time than I've had in a while,  here I am.  I will recap my garden failures and successes bit by bit.  Being a little short on attention span (a mid-life occurrence.....or maybe from raising kids), I will divulge all information in increments.   The ironic thing about this year's garden is that I probably put the least effort ever into it.  In fact, it almost didn't happen.
But here we have what I just picked today, and my goal is to eat as much as we can FROM our garden.  I think eggplant parmigiana is in our future!