Garden of Plants, Plants in a Garden

Story time.

There once was an antique sewing machine. It had a knee press and had a table top when folded into it’s stand, or a long side table when popped up for use. The machine was sitting out, gathering dust for months. 

On the extended table rested an old bath towel.

On the bath towel rested hard-covered children’s books.

On the children’s books rested tin foil to catch the excess water.

On the tin foil sat egg cartons.

On (or in) the egg cartons was dirt.

In the dirt were tiny green sprouts.

I don’t know what were in the tiny green sprouts. I didn’t pay that much attention in school.

These little sprouts started as seeds, and grew in my living room window, occupying my sewing machine table, for the last two and a half months. I just moved the last of them outside yesterday. 

I spent week after tedious week, watering, monitoring and reviving these little sprouts. About one third perished from lack of water. I just kept forgetting! They needed water every two or three days and that is very often for me to water my indoor plants. I’m learning that “low maintenance” plants are not really that for me. I’ve killed several “low maintenance” plants because I thought I didn’t have to water them more than three times a month. But once I started watering weekly, my spider plant and Christmas Cactuses are doing great.

Back to the sprouts.

Needless to say, I will be trying to grow them directly in the ground next year.

I did four types of herbs this year. 

I’ve never tried growing my own herbs before. But last year one of our neighbors gave us a bunch of fresh basil. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I tried drying it. Turns out, our shed is an awesome drying room in summer. I had a little jar with dried basil for about half the winter.

Inspired, I figured I’d try my hand at growing thyme, rosemary, basil, and oregano. So far several basil starts have survived our yard. One cluster of oregano is persevering. Five very delicate thyme starts have survived their first twenty four hours outdoors. And the ten or so rosemary starts are very promising (they had the biggest seeds and thus the most sturdy stems of the bunch). The thyme and rosemary are the younger starts, so I just moved them outside, where as the basil and oregano have dared the elements for three weeks now.

Wow, that’s a lot about herbs.

If you’re skimming, here’s the place to start paying attention again.

Other things I’ve got in my garden this year include; Two tomato plants (one’s a purple Cherokee, the other is maybe a beef steak), two blue berry bushes (planted them last spring), strawberries (got them last fall from my brother who was thinning his raised bed), radishes, pole green beans, two acorn squash (volunteers from the compost I buried this spring), three other squash or zucchini plants (more volunteers from the compost), and carrots.

It‘s the end of June and we’ve eaten some strawberries and some blueberries. Mostly my toddler has picked them before peak ripeness, so she’s enjoyed most the fruits of our labor.

Everything seems to be happy and growing well. Or “growing up” as my toddler says. She’ll say, “Plants? Growing up?” whenever she inquires how our garden grows. 

One note on the radishes. My plants didn’t develop the bulb like pink rounds like you buy at the market. They grew lots of very healthy looking leaves, and are now flowering. I read somewhere on the internet (and i believed it) that the seed pods are very tasty. It just started flowering, and they’re very pretty little flowers, so we’ll find out in a few weeks about the seed pods. 

If you have any recipes or methods of preparing any of the things mentioned above, I’d love to learn from you. Please feel free to comment below. Also, while you’re typing anyway, might as well include what veggie or fruit you most enjoy growing.

Thanks for spending part of your day with me.

Ta ta for now.