The Small Garden: Update 1

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. – Robert Louis Stevenson

This is the main garden, with the tasty things that deer like to nibble.
Hence, the fence. (I'm a poet and don't know it.)

It’s been a while again, I know... Hopefully this will assuage my guilty conscience. And what better way to do it than to talk about what’s growing in our small garden. Our veggie garden.

Whoever plants a seed shows faith in tomorrow. If we had no hope we would plant no seeds. Nurturing takes time, like a garden, and the benefits of your spent love and devotion might not be immediately evident. But day by day the seeds you plant will grow, until you reap the harvest.

Left, radishes that need thinning; right, peas starting their reach for the sky.

Planting a garden, physically or metaphorically, is a balm for the soul, and not strictly in a religious sense. The attention we pay to what or who we care about will come back to us ten-fold. To grow we must nurture, ourselves and others.

But back to plants... You might say that you don’t have room. Hogwash. If you have a sun-lit patio you have room.

This is the other smaller bed, containing herbs in the front and
veggies in the back. They have just started to sprout.

Luckily here in the country we have a little actual ground. Not much, but enough. This is the second year we have put seed to soil here, and will apply last year’s lessons to this year’s garden. My spouse and I planted our patch 13 days ago today. There has been activity, plus a couple light frosts.

So what did we put in? I will forget some things so bear with me.

Kale, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, radishes, rainbow chard, salad greens, peas, beans, pumpkin and squash. I am forgetting a couple.

We also have a perennial herb bed consisting of sage, chives, two thymes and oregano. For tender plants we put in Italian parsley, cilantro and rosemary. Tarragon and basil will follow in a couple weeks. There is nothing better than running outside to gather enough basil for a pesto. Nothing.

We have several fruits growing. What you see above is unripe
haskap berries. We also have blueberries, raspberries and
blackberries. Some grapes are on trellises as well.

If you think about what we've planted you can understand when I say that last summer the only thing I bought at the store was meat, eggs and dairy. I usually make my own bread.

Growing your own vegetables is not a difficult thing to do, and it is not too late. I know friends who are just thinking now is the time to plant. Some don’t until after the Strawberry moon (the full moon of June 12-13), after which all risk of frost is supposed to be past.

I’ve looked at the 2-week forecast. We’re hovering around 10°+ overnight. So I’m glad we didn’t wait. As it was, I knew we were planting later than my father ever did. I could even hear his voice.

Since we planted, there were two instances when we had to cover the squash, pumpkin and tomato plants to protect them from frost, but they came through.

If you don’t want to start seed, now is the time to get to the garden centre. There are tons of plant “sets” probably further along than anything in our garden. So if you’re willing to shell out the cash, you can insta-garden this year.

Regardless of how you do it, you should really take part in your own food security. The cost of a few packets of seeds (or some plants) is far surpassed by the bounty you will harvest.

Back left is the herb bed. We haven;'t invested a lot of real estate for the
amount of food we get. We did cut back on the tomatoes this year.
Last year I was running out of ideas to deal with them.

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