My first foray into gardening was a mix of successes and failures. I’ve always believed that that God had granted us “dominion” over the earth but most of the time my garden proved less than willing to easily succumb to my domination. I am pretty much at the end of the growing season and I have picked what I am currently considering the “final harvest” I say “currently” because it is California and any day now the temperature could rocket back up into the 80’s and within 48 hours I’ll have a fresh batch of mid-November veggies waiting for me when I get home.
However, I am going to assume that this is it. 
My tomatoes stopped producing a while back which left me with peppers, a few more peppers, and still another round of peppers. This is what I picked last night which doesn’t account for the two bags I froze and the dozen peppers I roasted last night for dinner. I’m through with peppers!!!!!
Since this is my first garden I decided to help other rookie gardeners with a list of the things to expect from your first garden.
1. A gang of snails can and will completely decimate an entire garden of seedling plants almost overnight. Forget all the online organic crap they try to tell you will work to get rid of them. Go for the snail poison early and often.
2. If you start seeing veggies disappear overnight and you think something might be eating them, something probably IS eating them. I figured my neighbor was helping herself until I caught the real thief……
Possums appear to prefer zucchini, bell peppers, and squash. They tended to shy away from the jalapeno peppers and Anaheim chili’s. They must have been gringo possums.
3. Plant half as many zucchini plants as you thing you will consume. You’ll have so much zucchini that by the end of the season you’ll be making zucchini ice cream just to use up the damn things.
4. Ditch the organic dream while you still have your sanity. 100% organic is only for the jobless hippies that have nothing better to do than pick weeds and hand remove bugs off the leaves all day.
5. Don’t overwater your tomatoes. Just don’t.
6. Don’t plant and pick Habenero peppers unless you are certified in the safe handling of bio-hazardous chemicals. Just one of those buggers in a batch of salsa will eat through a plastic bowl. I don’t even want to know what it did to my stomach.
7. Your tomatoes probably aren’t going to be as pretty as the shiny red hot-house ones you buy in the store, but they will taste a thousand times better.
8. Use copious amounts of Miracle Grow.
9. Deny using Miracle Grow. You just have a green thumb right?
10. Enjoy your garden.
The garden didn’t turn out perfect, but it was fun and there was a certain sense of accomplishment in growing even the small about of food I was able to produce. Next year I may expand my garden but for now I am taking a well deserved winter break and giving my soil a little rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment