Hello Summer!
Friday, June 12, 2009 at 12:33PM 
We're back. Sorry for the long respite, but it's prime gardening season here in Alabama, and I've been spending a lot of time tending to my little food factories - weeding, watering, and willing the nascent fruit to ripen. We've improved the garden quite a bit since last year, taking the opportunity to increase our acreage by tilling up more of our front yard. Once again, the virgin soil proved fertile, feeding a sea of tomato plants that are trying their hardest to rival me in height. This confirms my theory that lawns don't actually want to be lawns. Somewhere under that manicured corral (or weed-ridden, as the case may be) is a mini-ecosystem - a workable earth that is waiting and hoping for you to buck convention, trim its grassy mane, and let it do its part. Well, we heard the call, and we responded. And so far, our edible landscape has exceeded our expectations, providing us with sustenance, beauty, and a sense of self-reliance.
This year, I got a little overambitious (as I tend to do), and started about a billion tomato plants from seed. Cherokee purples, green zebras, and roman stripes all began their lives in our guest bedroom, suffering through the less than ideal conditions, to grow into the plants they are now. Because my indoor seed-starting was an experiment, where I couldn't necessarily predict the results, I had to have a back-up plan. So in addition to growing tomatoes from seed, I also purchased a few plants at the Arboretum's plant sale, just to be on the safe side - in case my experiment went terribly wrong and I was forced to eat tomatoes that somebody else had grown (if I sound snarky, here's a caveat: last season I harvested over 150 tomatoes from my garden. Once this happens, there is no going back - unless, of course, an army of hornworms decides to wreak havoc). What followed was a garden of more than 20 tomato plants, half from the Arboretum and half from the greenhouse de Grace. Although it may seem that our garden is nothing but a tomato monoculture, rest assured that we're also growing lots of okra, eggplant, basil, hot peppers, sweet peppers, melons, herbs, and beneficial flowers.
Every evening after work, I say hello to the hubby, pet the cats, then hurry out to my working laboratories - taking notes on my subjects and checking to see what a day's worth of sunshine has done for them. I deadhead, sucker, and weed. And I take care to squash any rogue pests that jeopardize the integrity of my plants, or challenge me for the first taste of whatever's growing. I also do a lot of oohing and aahing - yes, my childlike wonder is still well intact, and I continue to marvel at the general science of the garden (seed germination, plant physiology, and pollination, oh my!). Last Saturday, we harvested our first vegetables of the season - a lone Japanese eggplant, a blushing beauty pepper (albeit a little prematurely, it had not yet blushed), and a single sungold tomato (a marvelous hint of what's to come). Since then, we've also picked a few of the many peppers growing on our jalapeno and banana pepper plants. We've got a lot of tasty vegetables on the horizon. Here's hoping you do too!
Reader Comments (1)
Good luck on all the good veggies to come.
So glad to see you guys back. I've truly missed you.