Expanding

Is there a phrase for gardening that parallels "your eyes are bigger than your stomach"?

The amount of seeds, plants, and imagination that I have exceeds the space I currently have, so I have been working on multiplying the amount of garden space. This means the time-consuming process of turning over grass (thank you, landlords, for allowing me to do whatever I please with your yard!) and adding rich earth from another part of the yard. I'm also putting in a little brick pathway, for aesthetic reasons and also so that the ground won't compact as I weed/walk through.

To the left is the new soil and the beginnings of a path! (Do you see the white arched trellis? Right now there are roses growing on it... think I could get a tomato plant to wrap itself around?)

A preview of Brussels sprouts, which I recently learned take 20 weeks to produce... let the waiting begin!

Garden 2011

I moved into Maytown at the end of June last year with all the excitement and energy necessary to create a garden, but like I said, it was the end of June... thankfully Awesome Asher helped me out by buying a few plants ahead of time so that I had some things to care for during that sumer! So last year I found myself consumed with caring for just 3 different things: basil, tomatoes, and a pepper plant. Some of the tomatoes acquired a blight of some sort and the pepper plant never quite made it. But the basil proved itself, quickly growing into a bush and producing more than enough to eat, give away, freeze, and to make pesto.

This season I get to experience the whole season! Josiah encouraged me to try anything and everything, and if 50% works out, then that's a lot! I'm really looking forward to learning a lot this year through trial and error.

Cardboard egg cartons make perfect cells for starting from seed! I started tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, carrots, basil, anise, stevia, and mint this way.

I'm lucky enough to have a sunroom that makes it easy to start plants inside.

After a few weeks, I transplanted the tomatoes into larger containers - used coffee cups - and moved them to my bedroom windowsill.