Inspired in equal parts by the Obama kitchen garden and Chef Pasketti from Curious George, Phil and I embarked on a gardening project this year. Last year, we had a surprising amount of fun with a crowded 3'x3' garden clearing over-planted into near-oblivion. This year, Phil decided he wanted to do things right. Phil doesn't do anything half way, and immediately began researching gardening options for our sizable lawn. With three kids plus a dozen-or-so neighbor kids who stop by on occasion, our backyard gets a lot of play time. Therefore, it was imperative that there still be room to run even when the gardening experiment was in full swing. Phil found an excellent solution--the raised garden bed. He followed plans from this great garden planning website that proved to be a lot of fun.
Raised beds are easy and very cool. Phil built four of them, 3'x6'x1', along the driveway side of our lawn. These serve as a combination fence-line, landscaping, and kitchen garden. Since they're contained in beds, they don't seem to overwhelm the yard, the way that a large single garden would. Plus, raised beds are easy to weed, hold water well, and prevent little feet from stomping through the veggies.
As late summer approaches, we are now (literally) reaping the benefits of the garden plan. We're getting at least six ripe tomatoes every day, which I get to season with our own home-grown basil. Our cucumbers are filling out salads, our squash and onions and peppers are tasty on the grill, and our carrots are making yummy snacks after a quick pull-and-wash. It's cool enough for Phil and me as we eat out of the garden. It's even cooler for the kids, who were beginning to think that all veggies come from Super-Target.
Of course, we'll be making some changes for next year. Number one among them, Phil's going to build four more beds for the opposite side of the yard. We'll be adding strawberries to the mix, and expanding our sugar snap peas, carrots, and radishes which proved to be great for snacking. I also found that I rarely got around to searching through the viney cucumbers and green beans to actually harvest the veggies, so we'll be cutting down on those. Also, our timing was way off. By the time our tomatoes and onions were ripe our cilantro had already gone to flower. We'll have to stagger the planting if I want to make that homemade salsa I was looking forward to.
I've seen various websites and stuff that talk about how much money you can save by gardening. I'm not sure that I've saved a whole lot, but that wasn't really the point. Home grown vegetables (especially tomatoes!) just taste better and eating out of the garden is really fun. Sometimes I feel like I'm in that great scene in Willy Wonka where the kids can eat all the flowers and things growing alongside the chocolate waterfall. You know, the "World of Our Imagination" scene. To paraphrase, "If you want to eat a vegetable, simply reach around and eat it." Or, to quote more literally (but more hyperbolically) "If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it."


