It’s been just over two months since I started my small  home garden. The initial work to clear the area wasn’t much fun, but after that it wasn’t bad. We bought seedlings at Home Depot this time, I think next time we’ll try starting from seeds (browse the Burpee site for some interesting choices!) – for the first time we wanted the best chance of success! This was definitely a project about having some fun, relaxing, and trying to get the kids interested in gardening.

I can’t say I put much effort into the planting plan. I bought plants that I thought we would eat or that seemed fun, and absolutely did a swag on the planting. Part of it worked by luck, such as planting the corn in a grid versus a row so it would pollinate, part of it no good when the corn shaded the tomato plant (and the squash shaded the mint).  We had what felt like a swarm of grasshoppers that finally yielded to soap spray, but sadly the soap spray also burned the corn (because the kids used all the good soap spray and whatever it was that I put in to refill the container…or the amount…was too much!).

I gave it all one shot of fertilizer and somehow, in spite of it all, almost all of it has grown. It hasn’t been a huge harvest – some ears of corn, one cucumber (one? didn’t get that right),some small onions,quite a few cherry tomatoes, a few squash (something ate the rest on the plant), and some pretty good broccoli.

I mostly watered by turning on the hose and spraying it every couple days, and that was – along with just going out to see how it was going – the best part of it for me. Gardening is slow by nature, no need to hurry.

Gardening isn’t a serious thing for me at this point, it’s fun and doesn’t take a lot of time. It wouldn’t be fun if nothing grew, but short of that it’s been a nice change of pace. We’ll plant another batch of stuff in the next month or so, and after that who knows.