The Humble Garden

I'm going to skip over the standard list of lame excuses as to why it's been so long since my last post, and get right back into posting- ok with you? Excellent!


In all honesty, I didn't even write this post. This is a "guest post", if you will, from my awesome husband about our newly planted and cultivated backyard garden. This is the first time we've had our very own backyard, so we were thrilled to finally have some space to till a little land and see what sorts of fruits, veggies and herbs we can produce. Kyle very lovingly constructed three 3'x5' raised beds in our backyard, giving us 45 square feet to play with, in addition to some deck pots and hanging baskets. Enjoy his post below, and be sure to check back for updates on our garden, and the subsequent culinary inspirations it springs forth over on The Humble Table!

Kyle's Gardening Blog- The Raised Bed Experiment, Easter Weekend 2012

Partially to celebrate Easter and partially to celebrate the great weather in Lousisiana, we built ourselves three raised gardens. We choose raised gardens because our soil is dense and is will remain very wet for several days after a rainfall. The location is in the backyard and gets partial sun in the morning, direct sun during mid-day and shade in the afternoon. Prior to installing the raised beds, the lawn was broken up and tilled. The beds are 5’ by 3’ and constructed with 2” by 6” pressure treated timbers screwed together with brackets reinforcing the corners. After installing the raised beds and planting the seedlings, we discovered the LSU AgCenter has great guidance on this sort of topic. We might not have chosen the best veggies for our April garden in Louisiana, but most should survive and produce wonderful ingredients for my wife’s great meals. Below is a diagram illustrating how we have filled our three new raised beds:

Container Garden Update!

I have been meaning for some time to post an update on my container garden experiment for some time now, but as per usual, the kickoff of summer has had me running all over the New England coast! Not to say that I’m not having a blast doing it, but it has certainly kept me busy! So far the results have been predominantly successful, and Kyle and I have been able to enjoy some wonderful fresh herbs in a lot of our cooking (see Toasted Almond Pesto over on The Humble Table). My arugula didn’t fare as well as hoped (it may have been over exposed to sun & over crowded in the pot) and I had to restart my sugar snap peas (same problem w/ over crowding- I have a tendency to do that!), but all in all I’ve been very happy with my results!

Since the first post on the garden experiment back in April, I have also added tomatoes to the windowsill and they are just starting to give off signs of fruiting. I couldn’t believe how quickly they shot up, and I just staked them on Sunday, so they should start producing any day now! I planted four heirloom cherry tomatoes (in one very large pot) that have beautiful curling new leaves with a vibrant green hue. I also planted four heirloom Lemon Boy yellow tomato plants, and I can’t wait to start enjoying these beauties- the stalks are already so tall!

I think I may also pick up a small pepper plant (a little too late to start from seedling @ this point) over the weekend to take the place of the arugula pot, as I really enjoy fresh hot peppers in all sorts of applications. Hopefully I’ll be better with updating in the future, and I can’t wait to work with my homegrown produce in the kitchen!

A Little Patch of Earth

Last spring in Maine, I came down with a major case of the gardening bug. Kyle and I had just relocated from Annapolis to my father’s house for the summer while Kyle was in officer training, and I found myself with a fair amount of spare time on my hands. The house has a beautiful 3-tierd stone garden in the backyard, and I had visions of tomatoes, herbs, sugar snap peas, eggplants, peppers and anything else I could sow flourishing in the space. When the weather began to warm, I went to the local greenhouse and stocked up on seedling trays, seeds, stakes, and planters, ready to make my mark on the land. I spent weeks tending to delicate seedlings, repotting and replanting as I went along, and soon enough it was time for the big transfer. Everything looked perfect as my father and I took to the earth over the course of weekend, setting my little guys into the earth. There was a solid week where all I could dream about was fresh produce. We kept a watchful eye on watering and the soil, and the plants began to grow, showing signs of flowers and the fruits to come. And then it happened. One of the wettest summers in Maine. Almost everything in the garden succumbed to root rot from oversaturation, sans a few peppers, the peas and the herbs. Sadly, nothing more could be done on our parts, and I savored what few yellow tomatoes I could scare up like they were manna.

This year I was determined to take matters into my own hands and outsmart the elements. This may also have a lot to do with the fact that we live in a third floor walkup with no outdoor living space. Thus, the birth of my wonderful new container garden. Bearing in mind the heartbreak of the year before, I vowed to make this a success, and enlisted the help of container gardening experts McGee & Stucky and their book “Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers”- it is the bible of container gardening, as far as I am concerned, and I have become a happy student of their theology.

Following their advice, I started small and simple- an array of hearty herbs, a pot of sugar snap peas, arugula for salad greens, two heirloom cherry tomatoes, and two yellow tomatoes. I planted seeds using Scott’s Miracle Grow Organic Choice and placed the pots on a long board over our radiator in good sunlight. It didn’t take long for things to take off. Last week I successfully transplanted all of my herbs into larger pots, and am getting ready to do the same with the tomatoes and peas. It’s been wonderful to have fresh herbs for cooking (we recently used the parsley and arugula in homemade fresh sausage- amazing!), and it is rewarding knowing that you were able to coax these plants from seeds yourself- it may even make them taste better. It’s been great for the cat as well, as he’s now enjoying his third pot of cat grass, and spying on the birds outside through his makeshift jungle.

Through creating this container garden it’s reaffirmed to me that no matter what your living situation, be it the middle floor of a high rise or a small patch of land in the county, there is always room for a little garden, and there is nothing like the pride of enjoying something you created with your own hands.