What's in your garden this year?

I am really psyched about my little garden this year. I live in a duplex with a very small backyard with a patio area. Last year I grew herbs, leaf lettuce, and peppers on my patio. I also purchased two small romaine plants last year and they went insane, grew straight up, and went to seed. I kept looking online to see if I could find anything that looked like them so I would know what to do with them. From what I could tell, I thought I had a broccoli plant that was marked as romaine. Now, I have about 20 heads of beautiful romaine growing in all my pots. It is just gorgeous and a nice darker green. I used seaweed fertilizer last year in all those pots.

This year, I ordered organic, heirlooms seeds for several vegatables: tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, kale, watermelons, etc. I am trying to offset the high cost of fresh food and, most importantly, know where my food comes from and how it was raised. I don’t have pets and, due to health reasons, have had difficulty taking care of myself the last few years. I did a fairly good job on my little garden last year (it paid for itself) so my plants are like my children/pets.

I am looking for 2-tier shepard hooks but can’t find them. (If you know where I can order them please post that info.) I want to place 3 of them together and do this 5 times in my back yard. If I can find 2-tiered hooks, I can hang 6 containers in 3’x 3’ area. Then I am going to get large hanging planters and cut a 3” hole in the bottom and lay down some landscaping fabric with a slit in it. After my tomatoe/cucumber/pepper/squash plants take off, I am going to slip them through the hole in the bottom of the planter and then fill it with dirt. This way I can grow plants from both the top and bottom of my planter. There is a product out there that does this for tomatoe plants but I think a do-it-yourself version will work just fine. I’m going to run somekind of netting between the hooks for my cukes and squash to climb. If I can accomplish this, I can grow 12 plants in a 3’square area.

I think my landlady might let me plant a few watermelons next to the sunny side of the garage. If so, how awesome would that be to have watermelons this summer.

I want to buy local organic food but there isn’t much of it sold in the market where I shop. The organic food is grown by big companies and shipped in from CA. I don’t care to give them my business if I have another option. We haven’t had organic cucumbers for a while. We had them the other day and a 12” cuke was $3. I could not believe it.

I am going to go to the farmer’s market this year and see if there is a variety of organic food. If so, I think I know enough people to organize a weekly bulk purchase by the members in our group. Each week one member of the group can shop with a set amount per person to spend and divide the produce at their house for pickup. I hope this idea will work out because I certainly want to encourage more local farmers to grow organic. I live in the South and there isn’t much respect for organic food here. We don’t have a very educated population and people are poor and tend to want whatever is cheapest. The average person here honestly does not understand the advantage of organic.

But if that doesn’t work, I will still have my little garden and I am really excited about it. This is suppose to be the last week of a possible frost and then I can get started with putting plants out.