Jun 20th, 2008
Garden, ho!
Last year, Jan and I built a 4′x’4′ raised-bed garden along the side of our house. (Our yard has a lot of trees, and that’s pretty much the only consistently sunny spot.) We were very modest in our goals, and wound up with decent harvests of purple beans, lettuce, and Swiss chard.
This spring, we decided to expand our garden—not least because Sylvia was very interested in the project and had helped choose some flower varieties to plant. We added a 4′x8′ raised bed next to the first one, and filled both of them with mushroom soil, which is readily available in this area (southeastern Pennsylvania grows most of the mushrooms in this country) and has been described as “rocket fuel for plants.”
A wet, cold spring gave our seeds some problems, but now that the warm weather is here things are taking off a bit. We have zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, and some other flowers (I don’t know what they are—it was a packet of seeds that Jan’s dad sent to Sylvia from the Netherlands). There’s a bit of chard and Italian parsley, and two bean plants.
When Jan and I gardened at our apartment, we had a seed-starting setup (complete with heat mats and grow lights) in the tiny spare bedroom. Our plan is to do this in our basement, but we didn’t manage to clear out the clutter soon enough this season. So we went to our local farmer’s market and bought some tomato plants and several basil plants. My end-of-summer goal is to make and freeze a gallon of pesto.
Mmmmmm. Pesto.
Let us know the final count on the pesto!
Oh how I love pesto. Looks great!
lovely garden! can’t wait to hear about the harvest!