This winds up our first season of growing our own vegetables and fruit in the backyard. Three months ago the entire garden was lush and green and growing. Every evening I was able to step out back and collect tomatoes and cucumbers for our supper. It was a rude awakening when we came to the end of the harvest and had to go back to eating store bought vegetables that have been shipped in from God-only-knows where.
We grew cherry tomatoes, red leaf lettuce, cucumbers, red peppers, eggplant, broccoli, strawberries and figs. I stumbled through the season with very little idea of what I was doing, but Mother Earth is a good teacher and I’m looking forward to starting the cycle again in 2011 with a little more knowledge than I had earlier this year. Last spring I bought all my plants from a nursery, but I’m going to take the plunge and work from seeds in 2011.
I know that it’s a huge cliche, but until I spent the summer working with this garden, I was so completely disconnected from the food I was eating, of how it grew and of how miraculous the whole process is. I came to the garden last spring in nearly complete ignorance, but the plants really taught me exactly what they each needed. The moments that I spent each morning watering the patch were among the most beautiful of my summer.
One of my favorite resources for instruction on getting started in the backyard was Patti Moreno’s beautiful Garden Girl TV and her publication Urban Sustainable Living — free subscriptions are available on the Garden Girl site. Not only is Patti extremely knowledgeable, but her values are in the right place and the presentation of her information is always very inspiring and well done. I am extremely grateful for her good work.
Below is a little slide show of the clean up from last weekend.
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