Gardening - Take Two

Last year I started a garden as somewhat of a coping mechanism to deal with the death of a close friend. Dio and I have a very small porch (you can pretty much see the entirety of it in those two photos), so we started small. A few herb boxes, some tomatoes, peppers, some beans and peas, and a few hanging flowers. Just enough to get my hands in the earth and to have a little green around me. It was a bit of a hasty decision, so we started late in the season.

The yield last year was so-so. A lot of learning and a very wet June didn't help. The tomatoes suffered a blight due to heavy rain, followed by excessive heat, and an added bonus of caterpillars. The peppers also suffered because of the caterpillars. The herbs, however, did amazing. We had lots and lots of basil, enough mint for home made ice-cream, lots and lots of thyme (oh, the horrible puns), and enough chive, beans and peas for me to munch on while gardening.

Which brings us to this year. We did things a bit differently this go around.

For starters, I stared a lot of the herbs as seedlings, so about half of the herbs in my garden I have grown myself, from scratch, if you will. Dio was also kind enough to lend his engineer prowess to the planning stages, and we redesigned the layout to accommodate more room to grow. And an unseasonable warm spring (on April 7th it hit 90 degrees, which is a record high for Boston) and a gambler's spirit tempted me out to start planting a teentsy bit early.

Over all, today I am wondering if I got carried away.























This is only a bit of the madness. The full roster for the garden this year is a bit insane (at least for my opinion of a porch garden)

Sweet Basil/Purple Basil
Chocolate Mint/Peppermint
Curled/Italian Flat Parsley
Spinach
Sage
Oregano
Thyme
Chive
Leek
Scallion
Fennel
Roma/Bush/Goliath/Golden Pear tomatoes
Red/Green/Yellow Bell Peppers
Strawberries

and we still have room for an eggplant and an heirloom tomato!














Another experiment is the 'upside-down' gardening thing, which is apparently all the rage.We're using 3 liter soda bottles (Dio took three for the team and drank all that soda for me) and growing cherry tomatoes and strawberries that way.


















So far, the garden is a huge success. We've already harvested some of the basil for a Green Goddess Casserole, and the peppers and all but one of the tomato plants are already flowering. Hopefully it continues to flourish through the summer.