The Garden is In

There’s nothing like an early-May heatwave to really have you think you’re behind on gardening. When a friend mentioned in late April (when we had nearly 90-degree days as well) that Mother’s Day was the rule of thumb for tomatoes in the ground in the PNW, it felt like we had almost completely missed the boat. But I had not. It seemed I was right on time and I had not failed before I could get started.

With that, my friends, I am proud to say that it is not yet June and I have finally put things in the ground.

For those of you who have been on this journey with me, you know that gardening is not my strong suit. I mean, I did write about this in detail a couple weeks ago, so this isn’t new content. But I want the record to show by way of this post that I have learned some things from my failures. And in some cases I have not. 

So let’s inventory where I’m at with this gardening business as I set out on my 2023 summer-long journey to feed my family from my yard.

What I’ve Learned from My Failures

First, let’s talk about the failures of last year.

The first lesson was that I planted way too much in too small of a space. This comes from overdoing it at the garden store. I’ll bring home way more than should fit into the ground and then find a way to fit it in regardless. What resulted were small, tiny, bitter, and squished carrots and radishes. I tried to salvage them through pickling. That did not work.

The second lesson is that heirloom tomatoes take way too fucking long to grow. I was so ambitious at the garden store last year that I spent way more money than I should have on two tomato plants that produced fruit so slowly that I couldn’t even eat them until almost Halloween. So yes, this lesson deserves an expletive. I was convinced by August that I had already failed. Yet they did grow and I was able to eat 10 out of the 15 tomatoes that grew (thanks to the stupid squirrels for taking chunks out before I could). I also must say that the tomatoes I grew tasted…fine. They tasted okay. They weren’t mind-alteringly delicious as I had hoped, and in the end I put them in a very delicious sauce made delicious because I’m a good cook and the tomatoes were at least quite juicy. So there’s that.

So I took those lessons to heart for this season. To be much more mindful of my space I actually planned my garden before going to the garden store. I took an inventory of the plants I got from my kid’s school’s plant sale that came in half flats of an assortment of herbs and vegetables. And then I made an actual list of what I needed from the garden store to round those out (vs. going without a list and winging it and spending way too much money on heirloom tomatoes that will take 6 months to produce anything). And y’all it worked! I got exactly what I needed. Although, not without having a moment of panic that I did not have enough plants before I actually put them in the ground. Which means I clearly got just enough. I still want to plant more things, but that is going to require procuring more receptacles, so we’ll see.

And, of course, I will not be growing heirloom tomatoes. I would actually like to eat my tomatoes throughout the season and luckily the plant sale flat came with 4 tomato plants (sweet cherry tomatoes and early girl tomatoes). 

Check out the vertical garden planting process…

@crammingfortheapocalypseThe garden is in y’all! This vertical garden was such a score. More reflections on the full garden soon. #crammingfortheapocalypse #gardening #garden #sustainablegardening

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What I Did NOT Learn

And with lessons learned also come the things I will just continue to repeat time and again. One of the things I did not learn was to start early. My vision for this whole gardening part of the journey was to actually start my plants from seeds. To get a little indoor germinating setup started. I wanted to build the skills that showed that I could cultivate a garden in a world where there are no garden stores and that would be a place to start.

And you know what, I did take some steps early on. I posted an ask on Buy Nothing for all the seed starting tools. And when that didn’t really get traction, I kind of used that as an excuse to completely forget about it until it was nearly 90 degrees in April. We did, of course, have a two-week trip to Iceland during that time, so there was that interruption.

So we’re going to put that on the goals for 2024 and take the wins for now. Now I just need to keep it all alive.

Stay tuned!