For the past few years me and my boyfriend have been putting in a garden, each year expanding the size, adding more varieties of vegetables that we are familiar with and this year adding vegetables and fruit that we haven't tried growing before. About 75% of the plants were from seeds that we germinated indoors in a make-shift terrarium out of an unused 125 gallon aquarium in my studio. The other 25% of the plants were purchased, or like the strawberries, were perennials from last year. This year we tripled the size of the garden and added new things we haven't planted before, radish, sweet potatoes, pumpkins (which I'm really excited for) a few odd varieties of cucumbers, and corn (which was murdered by a strong storm last year) We even ventured out an put in a few blueberry bushes closer to the house which seem to be doing very well. While I don't consider our garden to be organic, we don't use chemicals to fertilize them. The only thing that we added to the soil was compost while it was being tilled.
I remember someone in class saying that the knowledge gained through this class is gained through the work, and I cant agree more. I learned so many things from being hands on that honestly wouldn't have picked up anywhere else. The class visits to all of the gardens was inspirational to me and i tried passing on that inspiration to our neighbors. Three of which have put in a small garden of their own. Participation park has inspired us to invite the neighbors to harvest what they want or need at their leisure from our garden. Roy got me thinking about eating seasonally, which seems to be a task that I'm not quite ready for, but has inspired us to stock up on canning equipment, since we will have more food than we can consume in a season, so we will be preserving and pickling for food in the fall and winter.
Next year we plan to make the garden about 6 times what it is now and do some sort of CSA deal. Where neighbors are invited to purchase canvas bags that can be refilled with veggies and delivered to their home. I don't have any desire to make any profit, just to kind of bring everyone together over a commonality. After all we have the largest yard in the neighborhood and I want to put it to work instead of just mowing the lawn every week. I am also contemplating getting chickens, yet I'm not sure what the neighbors would think, but there is always eggs available for peace offerings.
Below are photos from our garden this year...
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