Mary, Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

I hate that poem. People used to call me "Mary" at school because my nickname (which I hate) sounds a lot like Mary. It also reminds me of the Secret Garden. Who was Mary and was she actually contrary or were people around her just jerks?

Anyway, I decided that this was the year that I was going to start a garden. Ok, you can stop laughing now. I know that I don't exactly have a green thumb (understatement) but I thought maybe I'd try my hand at organic gardening. I had the problem that we're in a rental and I couldn't destroy the grass. The places with dirt where I could put a raised bed were too small or under the pine trees. The only place that had enough sun was on the grass. Also, the squirrels around here are VERY aggressive and would steal stuff off the plants. So I designed this garden and built it with Justin's help.

My garden-there are doors on both sides that swing on hinges and latch close. 

Onions.

Green onions

Left to right, front: cauliflower, spinach, carrots. Middle: broccoli, romaine, red leaf. Back: Sugar peas,  peas, pole beans.

Carrots, romaine, red leaf, and spinach (second batch)

Peas are starting to fatten up.

My sugar peas trying to escape!

Second batch of radishes. We harvested the first batch.

4th attempt at cucumbers. I don't think these ones are going to make it.

Tomatoes

My lone celery plant that survived

I've learned some things in this garden experiment.

1) I had too much nitrogen in my soil. This meant my veggies produced big, beautiful leaves and no fruit. My broccoli and cauliflower look great, but have little teeny-tiny heads. The first batch of radishes had 2 foot stalks but where woody and only a few tasted okay.

2) Don't start seedlings in February. I was following a chart, but we had a really cold wet spring which means that I didn't get to planting until May. So some of my seedlings didn't make it because they spent too long confined in little containers.

3) Plant easy vegetables if it's your first time around. I tried to grow celery and cucumbers, and both of them failed spectacularly. I might dig them up and plant more carrots.

4) Raised beds are awesome. I really only have to devote about an hour a week to watering, weeding and harvesting. Being so far off the ground makes it way easier on my back and also means less weeds.

5) You will not save money growing your own garden. Building the garden, dirt, compost, and manure, planters and seeds put us well over $400. That's before you add in the extra water consumption. I could have bought veggies for several months for that amount of money. Yes, the return on that money will get better each year, but we will still have to amend the soil every year and buy seeds. But the initial cost is over and I'm hoping that next year we'll be able to get a little bit more out of it.

I'm thinking of sewing some kind of vinyl cover to put over it and see if I can get it to grow all winter too. We'll see.