One of the great things about gardening is that it forces patience. You don't find out if your choice was the right one for months and months, and there's simply no way to develop a mature garden without years of work and waiting. Patience is a virtue that I sorely need to practice, and if it comes with fresh tomatoes, so much the better. A few gardening lessons that I've learned this year...
1. I like raised beds. A lot. Two years and a few lengths of 2x6 have given me a fairly weed-free vegetable garden - the beds were filled with alternating layers of St. Paul city compost and 99 cent bags of topsoil from Menards. There are very few lingering reminders of the forlorn raspberry bushes that used to be here. This photo is also evidence of two of last year's gardening lessons. Namely, if you leave a few raspberry canes, they will take over everything. That which they leave alone, the zucchini will devour, so plant that in a big container. (Leaving lessons aside for a moment, check out how much it's grown since June!)
2. Green beans grow really, really fast. There is a reason that these are the seeds that first graders plant in styrofoam cups.
3. Broccoli romanesco does not grow in the same way as regular broccoli - it's about ten times bigger and will threaten to shade everything around it. They weren't kidding when they said it was related to cabbage and grew in the same way. I'm still holding out hope for some fractal action, since I think this is somewhat of a fall crop. I bought these plants on a whim at the Friends School Plant Sale, just to see what happened. Well, now I know.
4. This side of the veggie patch does not get as much sun as I thought it did. The fact that it was really sunny here in March does not neccessarily mean that it will be so in July, thanks to the neighbor's tree. My tomatoes are ridiculously leggy, and are just starting to flower. The Amish Paste and Brandywine plants are probably pushing eight feet. I suppose I could pinch them off over the flowers, but I'm kind of interested to see how far they go. Next year, the tomatoes go back where they were happy last year, and the green beans will go on these trellises.
5. The IKEA wastebaskets worked really well for peppers. I've already got more fruit than I had all of last year. These might also be a good option for tomatoes. The plants love it here on the side of the house. It's really sunny and warm, and I'm able to give them lots of attention.
6. It remains to be seen whether I'll get any usable compost from leaves, vegetable scraps, and occasional grass clippings. It sure does make me feel virtuous, though. Next spring I'll plant some black-eyed susans and maybe some Russian sage where all this grass is going nuts.
And now, no more lessons. Just random garden pictures.
Ripening Roma tomatoes. Next winter's pizza sauce in action.
Ripening Costoluto Genovese tomato.
This fish pepper is worth growing just for the leaves. In June, it was almost devoured by some mystery bug, but it's rallied nicely since then.
