“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”
― Wendell Berry
― Wendell Berry
Two years ago, Melissa and I built two raised beds and tried our hand at growing a very small garden. Mel had read and then passed on to me this great article about the victory gardens that Americans had been encouraged to grow during World War II. We were both inspired and wanted to try our hand at gardening. I had grown up watching and helping my granddad grow some great gardens and then had even grown several of my own as part of a family garden when I was growing up and Mel had grown up in a family that grew great gardens. And so we grew a garden. It was very fun, but not such a great success. We made many mistakes, but we still caught the "gardening" bug. The next year, we increased our gardening space and built two more raised beds and had some great success, but also made many more mistakes. Now we come to this year! We moved the raised beds in effort to let the plants get more sun and built two more raised beds. We also added quite a bit of our own homegrown fertilizer courtesy of Eudora and Flannery (our chickens) and have been more than happy with our 2012 garden. I have tossed in the idea of just plowing our bottom yard next year, but Mel says enough is enough and that we have enough gardening space. I agree, but I just get ahead of myself all the time. So, here are some pics of our garden as it has taken shape over the last several months.I have been wanting to share these for at least two months, but Mel grew us a baby and we harvested the little boy on the 26th and have been sort of busy since then!
The coming together of old and new for the 2012 growing season.
We placed the two oldest beds against the wall and added a layer to them.
We got rid of our original herb pots and built two beds solely for herbs. There are few things that beat cooking with fresh herbs.
The infant cucumbers and Mel's ingenious way of growing more in a smaller space.
The infant Better Boy tomato plants along with the ground seeded with carrots and broccoli.
Adding zucchini and squash.
A new bed. Squared, level, covered, and ready for dirt.
My most handy of all assistants!
What a difference a couple of months can make in a garden!
We have already harvested around 30 cucumbers and 10 zucchini and one sad squash. And we have used the herbs and the Egyptian Crawling Onion a lot.
A cucumber waiting its time.
Our tomato plants are really going strong this year. Both varieties are loaded down with baby tomatoes. I can't wait to eat them. Fresh tomatoes have such a great and full-bodied flavor. They make the ones you buy at the grocery store taste like cardboard.
Cucumber plants produce beautiful, little yellow flowers.
A carrot that I'm going to cook very soon!
A Roma tomato plant loaded down with Caprese salad ingredients.
Mel and I love our garden and each year we make a lot of mistakes, but we also have had some great success. It is so nice to eat a full meal out of items you have grown yourself. It seems to make the food taste even better than it already does. Each year we grow enough to have herbs, potatoes, peppers and several other items for the rest of the year and we live on less than a quarter acre. It makes me want to sell off everything and move to somewhere I could farm, but then again, I could just be getting far ahead of myself and reading too much Wendell Berry.
Happy Gardening and even better eating,
David
“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
Awesome, David! So impressed!
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