2013 garden

I almost gave up on the garden after the last summer. If you recall, we planted tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The plants got really big and green, but we got only a modest amount of tomatoes (from 4 plants), a handful of cucumbers (from 4 plants), and only 2 peppers (from 8 plants). It was a huge disappointment, especially considering that I had such good luck with the peppers the previous summer. I think that the problem was a lack of nitrogen, which we tried to fix, but too late. We also didn't rotate our crops, which probably didn't help either.

And so the garden lay dormant all last fall and into the winter. In February, Drew and I went out and planted beets, carrots, collards, arugula, kale, broccoli, chard, and spinach. I'm not sure if something re-energized me, motivating me to plant, or if it was purely functional- we had a lot of seeds leftover from the previous year and no other plans for them. Or maybe it was Drew's reminder that gardening was supposed to be a hobby that I do for fun, not something I do to survive, and therefore I was allowed to fail- and could.

Keeping that in mind, gardening was enjoyable over the winter. Some of the stuff we planted came up, and some didn't, but I wasn't discouraged. Not even when a gopher stole the arugula. I didn't take any pictures, but we still have some beets coming up:  

 

A few weeks ago, I planted our summer crops. I intended to go easy this time and plant just a few pepper plants and a pumpkin plant, but the plants were sold 6 at a time (for the same price as a bigger one), so of course I had to get 6.  

 So I made room for 5 peppers:

 And 3 pumpkins:

I'm actually very excited about the pumpkins. I love pumpkins, and fall is quite possibly my favorite time of year. My grandparents live on a farm, and they used to grow tons of pumpkins. And, I don't know how they did it, but the pumpkins they grew were gigantic. When I was a child, they visited every October and brought with them pumpkins to carve. Perhaps this instilled in me an early love of pumpkins? 

I also planted dragon tongue beans:

 Which look like this:

One of the coolest things about gardening are the volunteers. They are like gardening magic, and I love the surprise. Last year we got a tomato plant, and this year we got some dill (which I mistook for fennel), and 2 more tomato plants.