Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does your Garden Grow?

Bite This: A study done by the National Gardening Association, suggests that $70 worth of plantings produces about $530 worth of food!

I was going to write all about gardening and how cool it is to produce your own good, healthy, wholesome food, but then my brother text me about something you may find even cooler – seaweed that tastes like bacon! So let’s talk about this first. Scientists at Oregon State University have been producing algae, that when cooked, it tastes like bacon! Sounds too good to be true! Two things here: it still has to be fried to taste like bacon, which isn’t particularly healthy, and they are “engineering” this algae which means it’s not natural. Bummer. Man, I really put a damper on fun things, huh?

So let’s get back to gardening. Gardening is fun! We had an opportunity this year to lease a garden plot at a nearby church. We thought, “what the hell?” (kind of ironic to say about gardening at a church?) and decided to give it a go even though we had never gardened before. (Nor do we go to church.) In fact, we cannot even keep plants alive in our house. We buy those plants that are “impossible to kill” and every time we somehow manage to kill them. Maybe we should rethink this parenting thing?

Okay, back to the story – so we leased this plot and got really excited to start our garden. We planted everything, starting in March, and waited and waited. Finally things started to sprout. However, we forgot to label the plants and we didn’t know the lettuce from the broccoli from the kale. But, that just added an element of surprise, I guess. Three lessons learned here: 1. March in the midwest is too early to start planting a lot of things 2.Don’t plant a whole bunch of things at once – limit variety 3. Label plants

At first the garden wasn’t doing too great, so we started planting things at home in little pots and then when they grew, we would plant them in our garden. This turned out to be a great idea because even if they didn’t survive in the garden, for one or two days it really looked like we knew what we were doing. Which is important when your plot neighbor is one of those big time gardeners who shows his home garden to magazines and such. I mean, he even had a rocking chair in his garden plot.

Now that it’s been a few months and we’ve read a few books on the matter, we really have gotten things together. We recently planted zucchini, squash, cucumber, and peppers (maybe a little too close together) that have taken over the garden. Lesson 4: Space out the plants!

I get a sense of peace and calm when I go to the garden to check things out. It’s odd. It’s like my sanctuary. Maybe because there’s a huge sign above the entrance that says, “God’s Garden”?  There’s also something about growing your own produce that gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment. And knowing exactly where it came from and how it was grown is pretty cool too.

What do you grow in your garden?

Sound bite: If you don’t already, try growing something of your own. (If you’re in CO, OR, WA, or AK, I am talking about produce.) You can start out small with things like herbs.