In the Beginning ... there was a Garden

As we prepare our 2010 garden, I wanted to recap our 2008 and 2009 gardens.

Last year was our 2nd attempt at a small backyard garden. In 2008, we only had tomatoes and green peppers in our garden. We started out with a makeshift huge planter that Daniel created out of wood and used potting soil--which I think attributes to the beautiful plants we grow. Our planter was at first attached to the house, but when we saw how huge the tomato plants were growing, we moved the plants to a larger makeshift planter that was on the ground, enclosed by cement blocks. It was so fruitful and such a nice exercise that we decided to make it a tradition. The only problem we incurred was that the large tomato plant didn't like the "move" from the small planter to the larger one. It almost died and didn't produce much fruit. We were delighted to discover how much we liked the cherry tomatoes. Our nickname for them were "crack tomatoes" because they were so addictive.

Last year, we planted 4 tomato plants (2 cherry and 2 large tomato plants). We also had 9 green pepper plants and one cayenne pepper plant (which we believes contributes to fewer bugs in our garden). We tried our hand at cucumbers and watermelons, but was unsuccessful. I think we planted the cucumber seeds too far down in the ground. And we kept moving the watermelon vines to facilitate yard mowing. It was a beautiful vine, but only produced 3 small watermelons, one of which was edible. It was during a heavy drought and Peter helped us water the garden almost every day. The only issue we had was a squirrel who kept trying to get our food. We made the wall of cement blocks higher to prevent him from getting in. We enjoyed the fruits of many cherry tomatoes, some large tomatoes, ate lots of green peppers and froze a lot. They lasted until March of 2010. We cut the cayenne peppers and placed them in olive oil with garlic, salt, and pepper. We are still using this yummy, spicy, concoction in our cooking.

This year, we have planted the following:

1 Big Beef Tomato Plant

1 Roma Tomato Plant

1 Grape Tomato Plant

2 Husky Cherry Tomato Plants

1 Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato Plant

9 Green Bell Pepper Plants

1 Anaheim Pepper Plant (I was just introduced to this lovely pepper about 2 weeks ago!)

1 Cucumber Plant (not from seed)

1 Jalapeno Pepper

1 Yellow Bell Pepper

We will add one Red Bell Pepper as soon as we can find a plant (Walmart and Home Depot were both hit hard this weekend)

We also planted a roll of flowers (from Home Depot) in the front yard, to replace the flowers I planted last year, which didn't seem to be coming up.

So, this was beautiful planting day. We look forward to a harvest of righteousness ... and fruitfulness.