Growing with the Garden

Last year was my first growing season in the mountains. I was really excited about the prospect of growing a few vegetables and planted my seedlings outdoors in April. In the southeast, this was a perfect time of the year to get your garden going, so I paid no heed to my neighbor's warning of potential snow and went about the business setting up tomatoes, corn, onions, and green beans.

Then in May it snowed.

Not a lot, mind you, but enough for me to panic and cover my precious seedlings in plastic. Then I left the plastic on for a week for fear of more snow. This was silly of me to do because I ended up steaming most of what I had started.

So, I replanted what was lost and chalked that up as a lesson learned. Things were coming along, although the plants were looking rather stunted. The concoction of soil we amended to make garden-ready-dirt was obviously not chock full of nutrients. Again, another lesson learned.

Despite having a munchkin veggie patch, I was pleased with the garden growth and happy to be actively learning the growing season by trial and error. My tiny corn stalks did begin producing ears, but never quite produced something edible. The tomatoes eventually exploded with fruit, albeit much later than I anticipated and nothing much larger than a golf ball. The thing that did the best was the sunflowers. They grew to a perfect height for me to appreciate their beauty, then fed the local bird population.

Once everything died down, I began composting kitchen scraps directly in the soil. Earthworms appeared and the dirt turned from sandy brown to a rich, dark brown. This year's growing season was looking a bit more promising.

I resisted planting anything outside until the end of May. Thinking I was past any last cold snap, my tomatoes went in the ground and the very next day it snowed. 

Luckily, the temperatures did not dip low enough to kill off anything and the garden has continued to flourish.

Volunteer squash popped up in the middle of my tomato patch.

One lone onion that was left in the ground from last year's try proved itself. I hadn't the heart to pluck it from the ground, seeing that it survived the winter. Plus, I thought it'd be interesting to see its life cycle.

This onion scape has doubled in size, bloomed and is now going to seed.

I thought, perhaps, the tomatoes were as large as they were going to get at this point.

Same with these sunflowers. I expected a bloom at any day when they reached this height.

But things have continued to grow.

The volunteer squash has gone out of control.

And I can no longer see the tops of the sunflowers.

The sugar snap peas have done much better than last year. We've been eating them in salads and stir fries. Delicious!

Volunteer squash blooms. . .

The green bean shrubs are still quite small, but at least they survived this year. I've gotten maybe a dozen beans off of them.

Roma tomatoes are popping out.

And more volunteer squash.

This photo was taken this morning. I now realize I have a serious overcrowding issue, but it's a little late to deal with that. Next year I'll try to be more conscientious of spacing between plants. I honestly expected things to be stunted or die off again, so I planted a bit more than I thought would actually grow.

Plus those darn handful of volunteers.

I'm tossing this image up to show the tiny grape vine that was planted at the beginning of spring and our neighbor's visiting cat. It's been slow going, but things are picking up now that the weather has warmed up.

 

Although there's been a learning curve, I'm quite happy with the progress of growing things around here. Learning the pattern of sunlight, moisture needs, nutrient requirements and the like is always interesting and will allow me to continue developing the curb appeal and backyard ambiance.