The Garden of Eating

This is my second year for a vegetable garden and I am overall pleased with the progress so far from our first attempt last year. Last year we planted what we called a ‘Salsa Garden’ which consisted of Roma tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers and Cilantro. These were planted in a semi-traditional row pattern along a fence line that got a lot of sun. We had a lot of tomatoes and hot peppers come out but the sweet peppers, cilantro and some onions we attempted in some patio containers didn’t amount to much.

This year I built four shallow raised beds of the square foot garden style. They are cheap treated plywood 4’ X 4’ with 6 inches of depth. I filled these with the free compost I got from the City organic waste department and set down a grid pattern with twine to make 1’ squares. Having had the winter to consider it at length, I had a more complex plan for veggies and planting schedule that we kept to fairly closely. I also put in potatoes in some spare bins and a sweet potato in the ground that had sprouted on its own, 10 blueberry seedlings along the back fence line and also two apple and a peach tree. Further discussions with my wife had me plant some sugar snap peas later than I typically would have and also allowing some garden volunteers of tomatoes and cilantro to grow where they were as the ground was not planned for other things.

In the actual beds I again had the tomatoes, peppers and onions but added beets, carrots, chard, garlic, basil, eggplant and acorn squash. I also allocated a square in each bed to marigolds because I had heard they served as a natural insect repellant. Significant April and May showers followed by some real heat in June have turned out some really crowded beds. The squash in the beds were threatening to take over so I had to put in some trellising. I also used trellising for the tomatoes which were overshadowing the peppers. I also pruned about half of the tomatoes to see if that had a good or bad affect. The chard and carrots are much taller than I anticipated so I am wondering if having it all so close together will cause more problems than it solves.

I am pleased though that some early damage from rabbits did not seem to have a lasting impact. The worst of it was that they were attacking the apple trees which looked like someone had hacked them with scissors. The nibbling out of the garden corners was annoying but doesn’t seem to have had too much of an effect on the final outcome. I ended up putting netting over tomato cages to protect the apple trees (for some reason they aren’t interested in the peach). This seems to have worked but I am disappointed it took me so long to figure it out. I think next year I will build much taller boxes (around 2’ tall) for the veggies that will keep them further away from the rabbits and also not require so much kneeling down.

Attached below are some pictures of the garden. See if you can identify the plants.