On Gardens of the Kitchen Sort

With reading for Comps and syllabizing of late in addition to having a guest in town, getting ready for my best friend's wedding, and other summer social engagements, it's certainly been a busy few weeks since I last posted.

For those of you who don't know, I did a community garden last summer with some friends wherein we had gold rush squash (a zucchini variety), tomatoes, mesclun lettuces, green peppers, onions, eggplant, and brussels sprouts. The cool, wet summer we Midwest folks had in 2009 didn't prove pepper-friendly, but the other veggies thrived, with squash over 15" toward the end of the growing season! (See photo below.) And, while I'm not weeding and harvesting the bounty of a community garden this year, I'm still doing two garden-y projects: a backyard garden in conjunction with my friend, A., whom I community gardened with last year and a kitchen garden on my porch.



Since A. has been out of state working on research projects until recently, I've been all about my kitchen garden. To get started, I took a CROPS (the community garden sponsoring organization where I live) class on container gardens. For example, I wouldn't have know that one should never plant a tomato and a pepper plant in the same container because the pepper, being part of the nightshade family, will stifle the tomato! We also covered topics such as proper potting techniques and ideal soil composition ratios. I highly recommend taking a class in your local community if you're interested in planting your own veggies, herbs, and/or flowers but don't know much about container gardening (like me). While I have grown herbs such as basil in the past and I do have several violets indoors, I was very much a newbie to the container idea. It's not too much upkeep (full sun and watering with occasional checks for pests like the cabbage worm), and the gastronomic benefits speak for themselves.






So, for your viewing pleasure, here are some photos of my kitchen herb garden. I need to take a more recent photo so that you can see how tall the green papper has become and how lush the other plants are looking as they fill out. In fact, I had to stake the pepper once I saw some baby green peppers starting! You may notice that while it's not 100% herbs--there is a green pepper plant and a few sweet/spicy pepper varieties and collards--it is mostly herb-y in composition. The taupe and brown pots each house several basil plants (I sewed many seeds at once and have yet to prune them since they seem to be sharing their pot well!), the gray pot houses collards, and the greenish-gray pot is my "true" container garden. It has a green pepper, mild/spicy pepper, sweet banana pepper, oregano, garlic, and purple basil cohabitating within its confines. Additionally, the taupe basil plot is also shared by chives and sage. My foodie heart soars to see all of them doing so well six weeks after planting!


On another garden-related note, here's an interesting blog entry on why gardening is good--not only for you but for the planet:

http://www.starcityblog.com/2010/07/can-gardening-save-the-world.html

If you're not comfortable taking on a large plot or even a container garden (or you just don't have the space), why not try a little basil plant? Your planet and tummy just might thank you.