This girl’s vegetable bed!
It’s been a month since the veggies went into the ground. And boy, have they exploded! There’s been nothing to harvest yet, but one lone green pepper is working it’s way to a “pick-able” status, and just in the last few days, a bunch of flowers have popped up on the tomatoes and cucumber.
I’m hopeful that Operation Homegrown Eats 2013 will soon find some fresh salad fixins on my plate.
We (okay, I) decided that this year, the vegetable garden was going to get a facelift. In the form of a raised vegetable bed! Tom was on board more so because he likes to build things than because he shares my vision of “living off the land”. I’m still trying to convince him of how awesome it would be to clear some of our overgrown woods and put in an apple orchard.
I love this time of the year because it means gearing up for planting flowers and watching all of the blossoms emerge. We’ve had some crazy weather here in Cincinnati, so my flowering bushes are taking their sweet time to show some buds. My Knockout Roses seems to be the only thing close to blooming:
I’m hoping the weather holds out this weekend or next for us to build a couple of raised beds for my veggie garden. Last year, we cleared a spot and added topsoil, but things got a little unruly, plus heavy rains washed the soil out into the yard. So I decided that raised beds are in order for this year.
In the meantime, a strawberry plant has taken over last year’s veggie plot. I was planning to uproot it, but there are a decent amount of baby berries growing! So maybe I’ll leave it. Or transplant it? Not sure if that will work too well.
Are you growing your own this year? What’s your favorite fresh veggie or herb to cook with? I love basil, tomatoes and cilantro!
Don’t have a grow table? Don’t worry! A card table in your formal dining room works just fine:
Let’s have a closer look at Operation Homegrown Eats 2013:
This certainly isn’t the prettiest operation ever, but hopefully it’ll be an effective one. Last year I bought a grow kit; this year, I went with the “use watcha got” mentality. And I’ve got an array of plastic pots, a flat, and a bunch of seeds. I even reused flower tags to make new veggie tags. And since I don’t have a clear lid to place atop all this, I’m going to see if plastic wrap can create the same greenhouse effect.
The more I write, and the more I look at the photos, I realize how completely janky this operation is. Which is funny, because I’m usually as much about the fashion as the functionality. But, seed-starting season kind of crept up on me. I mean, we just experienced Snowmaggedon 2013 last week, so this whole concept of Spring seems pretty unrealistic. I’m just hoping that I don’t end up starting over before these puppies ever make it into the ground (that happened last year… no thanks to the teeny tiny slots in the grow kit… no where near big enough to accomodate the roots of a summer squash seedling!)
Anywho, I planted 2 types of tomatoes (Brandywine and Salad Hybrid), cucumber, summer squash, zucchini squash, green onion, cilantro and basil. And I’ll probably end up buying green peppers, more herbs, and maybe another cantaloupe plant. That thing did alright last year.