Skip to main content

Appreciating my vegetable garden

 It's only when you know you are going to move that you start to really open your eyes to what is around you on a daily basis. Not only inside the house (how have we accumulated so much 'stuff' in the last four years?) but in the yard too. My raised vegetable bed is outside the front of the house, yes, not the back garden but the front. It's a small piece of land- maybe only a depth of 8 feet but enough to put a 12 ft x 4 ft raised bed. 

I started tomatoes and peppers under the grow light with heat pads in the basement last year, and ended up with a bumper crop because we had such a dry and hot summer but I didn't start any other veggies. This year I tried a bunch of different veggies but in the coco coir pellets. They started really well but almost too quickly and were fairly weak plants, so they didn't transplant very well. I took a chance and sewed new seeds into the bed a bit earlier than usual, along with the transplants. Luckily, it was a mild Spring and everything has taken off.



We've had lots of different kinds of lettuce, arugula and early Spring greens so far but the recent heat and humidity has meant that the greens bolted quite quickly. The 'cut and come again' lettuce has been great though. I've been a lot more attentive than usual, appreciating how good the soil has become over the years. It's crawling with all kinds of bio diverse life- not just worms. We've had a lot more rain recently too, therefore it has been easier to keep moist. I'm really enjoying waiting for the next seeds to sprout. 

In the back garden, I have one more raised bed down the side of the house that I put tomato, basil and zucchini in. It's also doing well but I'm not sure there is quite enough sun as the plants seem very 'leggy' but we'll see!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thank-full for health insurance

Having spent 4 hours in the emergency room last night with Dick, I am grateful that we have health insurance. It all started with a phone call from Dick saying he had fallen off his bicycle on his way home from work, and would I come and collect him as he was a 'bit banged up'? I rushed there and the first thing I saw was that I could hardly see his eyes- he was having a severe allergic reaction to something that was manifesting itself in his sinuses. All he could remember was having a huge sneezing fit after he 'woke up' having fell off his bike. 'Woke up'?? He couldn't remember hitting his head, although the scrape on the right side of his forehead showed he'd definitely banged his head. His first concern, naturally, was that the bike and his laptop were ok. However, we did not hang around to check them over, we just loaded them into the car- after he taken an anti-histamine that I always keep in my bag. For Dick to say he is hurting is unusual enough,...

Shrimp Artichoke Pizza With Cilantro Pesto

We are die hard home made pizza fans, and make one once a week- usually Friday or Sunday nights. They normally consist of a pizza base made in the bread machine, with toppings such us onions, peppers, mushrooms, and some kind of sausage with a good layer of fresh mozzarella. For a long time, Dick has tried to convince me that shrimp is good on a pizza, but I just didn't even like the sound of any kind of fish on pizza. If I've ever had shrimp on pizza it was a long time ago and they were small and hard after being baked. Yuk. However, last weekend we both ended up listening to a story on NPR about a winning pizza recipe in New York. It actually sounded good even to me, and tonight we made it, and it was lovely!

Labor Day weekend to Tahoe- Part Two

Plan B was to drive over the Sonora Pass instead- a route a little further north. So the next morning we drove the very twisty windy and beautiful route. 9624 feet up. The down side was it took us several hours. A long drive through western Nevada and we finally saw the eastern side of Lake Tahoe. So blue! We were staying at Northstar- a ski resort which turns into a mountain bike and hiking haven during the summer months. We arrived too late to go on the slopes but not too late to go and enjoy the sun going down over the lake. There was a really interesting cloud formation, and so the sunset was lovely.