The Adventures of MoMo: Our First Garden

Well, it looks like I'm actually sticking to my New Years resolution! When Nik and I found our apartment (an old home that's been converted to a 2-family home), we noticed there was a boxed-out garden area in the backyard. We asked the landlord if he minded if we planted a garden, and he said no. Little did we know when we first decided to plant a garden that we would go a little garden-happy.

We decided to plant a garden for many reasons, including: we really like vegetables, we really like cooking with fresh ingredients, we try to be as eco-friendly as we can, and we like to be outside. So began our first garden adventure. Considering that I'm very much a planner, as is Nik, our first garden was very poorly planned. We ended up with a combination of already started plants and seeds since it was a little late for us to plant everything from seed. After buying plants, seeds, and dirt for the already boxed-out garden area and planting said plants and seeds, we decided we wanted to plant more. After planting more, we decided to plant even more, our garden eventually making it way down the fence line to the back of the house.

We ended up planting brussel sprouts (in front of the bean seeds - not a good idea), bell peppers, tomatoes (in 3 different spots and too close together), cantaloupe, okra, poblano peppers, and cucumber. Despite the poor planning, we did receive a decent bounty:

An okra flower about to blossom before producing an okra.

We had about 5-6 cantaloupe that got to this size, but all of them died before maturing because of too much rain (at least, that's what I think).

(brussel sprouts)

As mentioned in an earlier post, we decided to clear out the area between the garden spots we already had and built another boxed out garden area. This one is closer to the house, so it gets more sun than the pre-existing boxed-out area. We planted everything from seed, which included: butternut squash, rainbow chard, collard greens, beets, and kohlrabi. We found out later, when the butternut squash plants died with baby squashes on them, that we planted the squash plants need to be planted earlier. Everything else did well though. Some pictures of the garden, from the first day, are below.