You Grow Girl™

I, like some other gardeners on this site, garden on borrowed land. I have a very sweet ninety year old neighbor named Ula who has been an avid gardener for many years. She has for the last year allowed me to use a section of her lot for my very own vegetable garden. This year her arthritis has been a bit more aggravated so I offered to do all of the work in her garden for her. Upon offering she promptly gave me a list of vegetables to plant: purple headed turnips, pole beans, three tomato plants, mustard and collard greens. In addition to that I will put in cantaloupe, eggplant, basil, pineapple sage, butternut squash, acorn squash, sweet potato, cucumbers and swiss chard. I already have two artichoke plants going and am trying to decide what other perennial vegetables to put next to them. I am thinking blueberries and asparagus would be nice but I may put in Pelargoniums instead. They seem to compliment the artichoke plants nicely.

We have had quite a bit of rain this winter but it has finally begun to warm up and show signs of spring. In a frenzy last weekend I rushed out to buy every garden magazine I could get my hands on. In addition to that I bought the Sunset Vegetable Gardening book and some new tools. I was hoping this would help me have some discipline in my planting this year, since I usually wing it and end up overcrowded. In Sunset Magazine, the gardening issue, I found an article about the process of double digging and decided that would be the best technique for cramming as many plants in that could possibly grow. You dig down two spades lengths into the soil and then mix in organic compost to amend the soil. This allows the roots to grow deeper rather than wide so that you can grow twice the amount without threatening the crops. All of the digging was quite a chore but I think it will be worth it.

I am also planning to put in an irrigation system. Last year I got too lazy to water and with our 90 plus temperatures in Pasadena my plants really suffered. Rather than treat all of them to a slow and painful death I am going to do the responsible thing this year, irrigate!

I put my boyfriend in charge of getting all of the seeds started. He got impatient with the poor things after about 4 days and started digging around looking for sprouts. So far only the cucumbers have come up, and I think I noticed a little baby eggplant this morning. I'm not sure if the rest will survive the disturbance of his eagerness. Hopefully with any luck we will all be feasting off these plants in a couple of months.

This weekend I am heading to my favorite nursery Hortus for "tomatomania"! They will be getting in over 100 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. I have never been to this event so I am excited about it. Last year I got dud tomatoes from an impulse buy at the hardware store, (disapointing, but a foolish mistake). The only tomatoes I am truly desperate for are Yellow Pear, Marvel Stripe and Enchantment but I am also interested in a peach variety called Garden Peach that actually grows with fuzzy skin. I am sure I will go overboard and get too many plants like I always do. I am trying to be a good gardener, I really am, I just get too caught up in the OOH and AHH of it all.