Vegetable Garden Test

More on our gardens!

My husband has spent his life either in a very urban setting or stationed on military bases all over the world - none of which truly allowed him time to plant a vegetable garden.  This year he agreed to let me try adding vegetables to my flower gardens.  You see, adding gardens in this area is a MAJOR undertaking as you have to dig (drill) through clay and then add dirt etc.  Or you can do something called raised bed gardening (on my to do list in a year or so).  Since it is just the two of us, we don't need a huge vegetable garden (yet), so I thought I could utilize garden beds that were already in existence and just add my veggies to it!

Rather than overwhelm ourselves with tons of things, I decided to try out 5 tomato plants, 2 cucumbers, 2 squash and 4 yellow pepper plants.


They resemble small trees - but they are just a few tomato plants.  These are all over 5 foot tall and have thick branches held up by the metal cages.

My tomatoes grew wildly - beyond my expectations!  It is VERY dense in the tomato area.  We have fresh sweet tomatoes all week long.  I planted a variety to see what we liked.  Honestly next year I'm going to try out new ones as none of these were exactly what I wanted.

With the horrible heat wave baking us this summer, I lost my squash and cucumbers.  I watered every day, but to no avail.  I can only take heart that other people (who are much more knowledgeable than I) lost their squash and cucumbers too!  So next year I have high hopes to try again!!

My yellow peppers!  In the beginning they struggled and then took.  Each plant had one pepper growing.  We were so excited.  Then the heat wave... UGH... cooked peppers.  I thought for sure that was it.  I was wrong.

This is only two of the pepper plants! There are two more beside them.  Look at the bounty of peppers!!

My peppers LIVE!  They are all offering us peppers - many peppers.  I can see some lovely bags of peppers in the freezer to bring out in the dead of winter!

I hope you enjoyed this tiny peek into my gardens.  I should share my husband's reaction to our attempt at farming.  He is thrilled.  I think he would make a great farmer.  He loves to work on the plantings, weedings, caring and harvesting of the plants.  He loves to eat the fruit of our labor.  I'd plant 100 tomatoes to see his happy smile when he bites into the tomatoes!

Just around the bend - I'm thinking about trying some hydroponic herb gardening under grow lights in my basement this winter.  I'll keep you posted when I figure that out!