This summer we planted our very first garden. And we grew things. And we ate them. It was so exciting.
Here’s a little re-cap of how it went, what we learned and what we might do differently next year. We by no means are master gardeners. We (or really I) can keep houseplants and herbs alive inside like nobody’s business, but when it comes to outdoor gardening, other than begrudgingly helping stick seeds in the ground in my parents’ garden growing up, I had zero experience. Ta’u had learned some gardening skills back in Binghamton helping out with a local church garden, but basically this was our first time doing it all ourselves and with, well at least an 80% interest in it, if not for the love of planting, at least for the potential outcome of free (mostly), all natural, locally grown food. I say 80% interest because we could have invested a lot more time in the planning, caring for and harvesting, but the lesson learned is, even with only 80% input of time/energy, you still get a lot of great fresh food. Sure it could have been better…we could have maximized space more or replanted a few times with early and then late season crops, but in general, it was a great first try. 
We pulled out our Organic Gardening Encyclopedia, given to Ta’u when he was in his Binghamton gardening phase, and looked around for ideas of what to plant, when, and how to space it. We basically picked the things we buy the most at the farmer’s market, and the things we thought would be easy-ish to grow. We decided to try more of a 1’x1′ square layout versus rows of plants to maximize the 10’x4′ plot we had. And we tried to plan out where to put things based on which side of the garden would get the most sun…..We planted the largest plants (tomatoes) on the eastern side, and plants that would grow up the trellis (cucumbers) along the north side so that they wouldn’t block the stronger southwestern sun from the rest of the garden [File that under things you don’t have to think so much about when you live on an island near the equator (ahem, Hawaii)]. Most of the seeds themselves were gifted to us by our landlord, a master gardener for real, so we spent 0 dollars on seeds. Yippee. Although, I have since learned not all seeds are created equal, and they actually expire, and there are things such as organic seeds, and sometimes you can save seeds from your plants for the next year….so as I said, still lots to learn. But for this year, free seeds got us pretty darn far.
We didn’t start anything inside ahead of time because we didn’t find out we won our community garden plot until May 18th….already time to plant in the ground. So we only planted fast growing veggies from seed: a few varieties of mixed greens (lettuce), beets, radishes, swiss chard, zucchini and cucumbers. 
The things that take longer to grow we planted from seedlings that we bought at our local coop. You can also get great seedlings in the spring at many of the farmer’s markets. We planted 4 varieties of tomato (one grape tomato, two varieties of roma tomatoes: La Roma III Red and Speckled Roman, and an heirloom tomato, Old German), 2 varieties of kale (Lacinato and Winterbor), 2 green pepper plants, a few heads of lettuce (Romaine and New Red Fire lettuce), 3 varieties of basil (Thai Basil, Lemon Basil…so yummy, and Italian Large Leaf Basil), as well as chives, cilantro, and dill (we mostly picked these herbs because I have a terrible time keeping those particular ones alive in the house). Although we knew what plants we wanted ahead of time, the varieties we chose quickly and a bit haphazardly as we saw stuff we liked because just as we began picking plants, a huge thunderstorm hit and they were closing up the outdoor tent with the seedlings as we frantically tried to grab what we could. We were going away the next weekend and the season was already getting a little late for planting so we knew we just had to get them that day. Again, there was that 80% effort. All in all, we spent $30 on seedlings. Not too bad considering the we probably made that back with the first 3 lettuce, herb and radish harvests. 
Our first tomatoes! 
Our first harvest included radishes and lettuce. Our biggest, really our only fail, were the beets, of which none grew at all…it may be because the seeds were a year old, but out of everything we planted we didn’t think one fail was too bad. 
We did realize within a few weeks of planting that bunnies were eating all our kale and lettuce, so we had to come up with a fencing solution. Luckily the garden wasn’t too large, so once we had it planted, we could fence it all in and still weed by just reaching over the fence. And let’s be real, we weeded 2, maybe 3 times all summer. We bought the supports for the fence at home depot for about $12 and we scored old chicken wire from a friend who was moving, so it was a pretty cheap fix. 
We learned, perhaps a little too late, that you actually need to trim your plants. We knew to keep picking the flowers off the herbs and lettuce to keep them from going to seed (or delay it) but I didn’t realize right away that the tomatoes, for instance, needed trimming to beef up the stalks and keep the resources going toward making tomatoes, not just making more and more branches and flowers…There’s actually quite a science to how to prune each type of plant and it’s something I definitely want to study up on before next summer so we can get more veggies and less overgrowth on each plant.
Toward the end of July or beginning of August, the zucchini and cucumbers started taking over the garden (mostly the zucchini), partly because we didn’t space them well/we sort of thought the zucchini would grow up a trellis….wrong on that idea. It grows out in every direction, so it needs a lot of space (next year I’d space it with about two feet in all directions around it, to really let it grow to it’s full potential). The cucumbers did need a trellis, so we put a tall wire fence down the north side of the garden for the cucumbers to grow up and to isolate the zucchini on the older side, away from the rest of the plants it was crowding out. It worked for the most part, and even though the zucchini was a bit jammed between two fences, it still managed to yield about 5 or 6 huge zucchini….you have to watch those things when they start to take off. One week you can have nothing at all, not even the start of one, and the next you have a zucchini over a foot long! They taste better before they get oversized, so it’s good to catch them and pick them before they get to State Fair competition-size proportions. 
Maybe our only other fail were the peppers. Each plant only produced 1 until very late in the fall, when I picked 3 more off one plant right before a frost, but there were pretty small. We still need to research what went wrong there/how to make peppers produce more. Maybe it was just too short of a season for them? Any experience with peppers? 
Here’s our final haul, right before the first big frost. Unfortunately we never photographed our beautiful and so so sweet Old German heirloom tomatoes, or our huge zucchini….Next year we’ll be better with the photos. Most of these were snapped on our phone as we were quickly harvesting some things on our way to or from our next commitment…..again 80% effort, but still awesome results. 
Isn’t swiss chard so pretty? 
Here’s a fun little experiment I’m trying…. can you replant basil from your garden into a pot two sizes too small and have it survive indoors throughout the winter? So far we are at day 4 and they are still alive. I tried it with chives too. I’m not too optimistic. Here’s a case where I probably only put forth 50% effort, because I just reused some old pots I had lying around, hoping they’d fit, realized mid-transplant that each plant’s root system was way bigger than I had anticipated, shrugged, and stuffed them in anyway. I’m really not a plant hater…quite the opposite, I just couldn’t bear to let these guys die with the frost, but I’ll admit I could have done more for them. Why not just make pesto and be done with it, you might ask? Well, the two basil plants that I transplanted were a Thai basil and a lemon basil, which are so hard to find in most stores. I wasn’t sure how they’d do for pesto because the flavor is very different. The lemon one is amazing, you can throw it into anything and boom, basil and lemon flavors all in one.
Quick Lemon Basil Tomato Mozzarella Pasta
My favorite way to use the lemon basil this summer was to cook a pot of penne pasta, sauté an onion and 1-2 cloves of garlic (best start to anything) in some olive oil until softened. Throw in garden fresh, yummy tomatoes, roughly chopped, for 2 minutes max, just until they heat up a little but still hold their shape. Turn off the flame, throw in the lemon basil, chopped, and mini fresh mozzarella balls and mix with the pasta.
The pasta is so good with that citrusy flavor from the basil. I added the lemon basil to it the first time by accident thinking it was regular basil, and I repeated it again and again because it was such an amazing flavor bomb in my mouth. 
Sadly this week marked the end of our garden, except for hearty, frost-lovin’ mister kale, which is still thriving. On Monday it started to snow and I knew I better get out there to save what was left before the 28 degree nights hit that were forecasted for this week. I dug up and composted all the lettuce, which had long ago gone to seed, and the herbs, which had already died. The basil and chives were still alive so I replanted some and harvested the rest. I picked the last few little peppers and pulled out those plants and pulled up the zucchini and cucumbers which had died out a while ago. I cut back the swiss chard….I wasn’t sure if it could survive the frost so I took most of it, but didn’t pull it up in case it wants to keep going a little longer. I also picked all the green tomatoes that were large enough to save and on the recommendation of our landlord packed them in a cardboard box layered with paper bags to see if they will ripen. If not, there are lots of good recipes for green tomatoes…. But I left that hardy kale, which usually tastes better after a frost, I’m told, so we’ll see how long that lasts. 
Goodbye tomatoes! You were great while you lasted. 
The community garden at it’s peak….wasn’t it pretty? It was this community garden’s first year and I think it went very well, although we almost never saw anyone else there, so we didn’t feel all that community-ness we had hoped for. Maybe next year….Maybe we just garden at really weird times….
And the garden today, looking pretty sad after the cold weather this week. Winter is always such a bitter blow at first, especially before the beautiful white snow hides all the death and brown beneath it. Bring on the snow? Ok, maybe not quite yet, it’s not even Halloween yet, and there are still lots of green trees that still need to turn brilliant colors. Let’s hold off on that snow a little bit longer at least, shall we?
Oh and here’s a quick cost run down:
Community garden fee: $30 (gave us access to water on site, and gardening tools so we didn’t have to buy any)
Seeds: $0 (gift from our landlord)
Seedlings: $30
Fencing: $12 (for stakes only, chicken wire, and taller fence/stakes given as gifts)
Total: $72
While that may seem like a lot, considering we never bought lettuce all summer, or tomatoes when they came in season, not to mention herbs (which get expensive), zucchini, or cucumbers….I think we probably at least broke even if not saved a bit. And we know where it all came from, we know we didn’t use chemicals on it, and we can proudly say we grew it ourselves….and everything tastes better when you can say that. It was well worth it for us.
**Favorite tip: Our landlord told us to put calcium vitamins in the soil around our tomatoes, because more than nitrogen, tomatoes need a lot of calcium and usually don’t get enough in the soil. We had tomatoes for a good two months and they were delicious. Not sure if it was due to the calcium, but we’ll definitely try it again next year.
So, have you gardened before? How much effort do you give it? Are you as excited as we are when something actually grows and then you get to eat it? It’s like we are little kids discovering life all over again. So that’s gardening year 1. I’m excited to see where next year might take us…maybe we’ll get crazy…. Brussels sprouts anyone?