Our Pathetic Garden

Gardening has never come naturally to me.  Growing up my mom and dad grew tomatoes.  Maybe they grew other things as well… I remember tomatoes.  I was never really part of the process.  Plants grew, it was brought inside (from either the garden or maybe the grocery store?), food was prepared, and I ate it.  That’s what I know. 

Anthony grew up with the master gardener himself… his dad.  He grew everything.  Anthony remembers rows and rows and rows of corn, lots of potatoes, tomatoes, squash, peppers and much more.  He helped to till the dirt many times over the years.  However, he doesn’t seem to have picked up the green thumb gene.  It must skip a generation.  It’s the only logical explanation. 

I personally have only heard stories up until now about this infamous garden my FIL grew each year.  My in laws moved from their home around the same time Anthony and I got married.  They had lived in rentals until a couple years ago.  This is the first year since then that they’ve had a garden to speak of.  I’m jealous!

Since moving into our home over 7 years ago we have tried to grow a garden 5 times.  Each time we got nothing!  Actually that’s not exactly true…

Garden #1 – The plants grew and actually produced but we weren’t diligent enough to keep up with the weeds.  Then we kind of forgot about the vegetables.  Yep, we’re awesome!

Garden #2 – Tried a new thing (supposedly weedless) … Square Foot Gardening.  We followed directions to a T!  Went to the nursery for transplants, planted, things were growing well for a couple of weeks then we had a late freeze which stunted the growth of the plants.  They all lived the duration of the respective plant’s life span and even got a few flowers but never produced anything.  The plants were too small. 

Garden #3 – SFG again… nothing grew.  All were transplants again but didn’t grow.

Garden #4 – (last year) – same as the year before.

Garden #5 – (this year) – Tried a traditional garden again.

Well, it kind of worked.  This time we did it all from seed.  We started them inside where they all took off like champs! 

But I knew better than to get my hopes up.  All we knew was that we were desperate for something… ANYTHING… to grow.  Which is why we grew radishes.  (Yuck!)

HECK!  We would have planted SPAM seeds if we thought they might grow!!!  Seriously.

Anyway, I was right in not expecting much of my seedlings.  Once I got them outside they all shriveled up and died.  All but one…

BIG MAX!  He’s so big I can’t even get him all in the picture.  {That’s a lie… I just don’t want to step back far enough for you to see that we never got our grass put in.  Shh!}

He is the winner!  A pumpkin plant.  The bees like him, too.  

So, we may not get anything to actually eat from our garden but by golly, we’ll definitely have something to carve this Halloween!

But I did plant seeds again.  This time I just planted directly into the ground.  Most of it didn’t grow.  They didn’t like my black thumb.  But we did get a few things. 

Corn…

(What is this?  Is it flowering already and we won’t get corn?  Anthony says it’s normal… I’m skeptical.)

Lettuce… (Italian Blend.  Way too strong tasting for us.)  See all that extra space around the lettuces?  That’s where other plants were planted but didn’t grow. 

Radishes… (no pics because they’ve already been harvested.  We got a total of 4!  I think I planted at least 15. :))

Another variety of pumpkin… (Little Max)

These ones are in the SFG box.  Growing slowly and slightly yellow.

Garden Beans… (no beans yet)

Oh, and look what Big Max is doing!  Hooray!

But look what else he’s doing… Boo!  :(  Maybe it’s normal?  {Please tell me it’s normal!}

**Things that were planted but never grew… tomatoes, carrots, peppers, spinach.  Cucumber and Cantaloupe were also planted and actually started growing but didn’t stand a chance against whatever pest decided to come and eat them while they were still too young and innocent to defend themselves.  Stupid bugs!**

Did you plant a garden this year?