I haven’t posted a garden update in almost a year and half. Due to my health issues, I’ve had to put a lot of things on the back burner, including my forays into gardening. My little container gardens are still on the back deck, and I figured that once I was feeling better I would pull out the weeds and try again. Jai has been keeping an eye on the garden, since the last batch of plants had apparently dropped some seeds that were starting to grow on their own. Yesterday afternoon, he walks in the house with this:

A carrot! Not only that, but a large, delicious carrot! And there are a few more growing in the containers as well. How my abandoned carrots from 2010 managed to re-seed themselves and grow through all kinds of crazy weather with no help is amazing. No wonder root vegetables are such a popular and plentiful crop to grow.

(The slice you see in the carrot is from where Jai was chopping it to eat, when I said: “Wait! I haven’t taken a picture of it yet!” Ah, life with a blogger. ;))

I find it hilarious that when I was tending my garden and trying to grow produce, I ended up with the smallest carrots ever. But after I completely abandon it, I suddenly end up with the nicest carrot I’ve ever grown! At this rate, if I continue to ignore my garden, I should end up with a bumper crop. 😉

Have you gotten any garden surprises lately?

I haven’t done a garden update for a while – mainly because there hasn’t been much to talk about!

Yep, that sad little wasteland is my garden! Between the raccoons digging holes, birds flying off with my fava beans, and weird weather, the plants had a rough summer. My broccoli was looking good until it “Bolted” after a freak heatwave early in the season – which means that the edible broccoli crown turned into flowers:

The plants that have grown have been rather stunted – I got a couple of tiny onions and now have carrots growing that are the size of my pinkie finger. I assumed that they would just keep growing and getting bigger, but that hasn’t been the case. Yesterday, we got all excited about a “Big carrot” that had grown:

So we pulled it out of the ground…

Yes, that’s our “Big” carrot! 😉

Even the garlic failed:

Those sad little black lumps are the garlic cloves I planted last year, which never grew. At least, I think these are the cloves – they’re so shriveled that it’s hard to tell! It’s funny that this crop failed, when the first crop I ever planted suffered much worse conditions and turned out great!

However, we have gotten some lovely tomatoes:

Earlier in the year, we bought a second tomato plant and a Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter. It hasn’t been a huge crop, but enough so far to compliment a few batches of lasagna!

As I’ve said before, gardening is a new endeavor for me, so I’m not horribly disappointed that this year’s crop was a dud – I didn’t go into this with any expectations other than gaining experience so that I can learn how to grow great crops in the future.

Readers: How is your garden doing this year? Did you get a bumper crop – or a bumper flop, like me?

I’m excited to expand my little container garden, so now that spring is here I’ve taken the opportunity to add more plants!

A few weeks back, I stopped by a local garden store and Home Depot to buy some plants and seeds. Here’s what I picked up:

4 onion bulbs (also known as “Sets”) – price: .10 cents
1 tomato plant – price: $1.69
1 packet of carrot seeds – price: $1.69
1 broccoli plant – price: $1.98
1 raspberry bush – price: $6.97
1 pot – price: $3.28

I planted the raspberry bush in the plastic pot that we picked up, using some potting soil that was leftover from when we built the planters. Everything else went in the existing two planters except for the tomato plant, which is thriving on my kitchen windowsill. In addition to the broccoli, onions, and carrots, I planted additional radishes and fava beans, since I still have a ton of those seeds left. The onions are shooting up like crazy and everything seems to be doing well so far – with minimal interference from raccoons!

My approach to gardening is to expect nothing other than to learn. Since I am a novice, I know I’ll make plenty of mistakes, and there will be a learning curve in determining what will grow well here. That’s ok, because this is how I’ll learn the skills to grow lots of great produce in the future!

So far, my efforts in container gardening have gone fairly well. Of course, there’s always setbacks – a cold snap killed off most of my plants a few months back, and now raccoons have decided to dig for treasure in the planters:

Here’s the really bizarre part. Jai had been trying to grow an avocado plant indoors, but it wasn’t doing too well. He decided to stick it in the planter a few months back, just for fun. Well, the raccoon dug it out of the first planter, carried it over to the second planter, and stuck it into a hole they dug. They were “Helping” me transplant it!

And how do we know it was a raccoon?

As you may recall, I’ve been dabbling with container gardening for a while – first with garlic, and then with radishes, fava Beans, and corn salad. My last garden update was full of promise, but a cold snap soon froze my little budding plants and they quickly died off. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few little corn salad plants hung on – here’s how my planters looked yesterday:

I did a Google search on when to harvest corn salad (AKA mache), and found this helpful page over at The Victory Garden. Apparently, you can start using the leaves once they are 1-2 inches long – so I decided to make a little salad to go with yesterday’s lunch.

I tossed the salad with olive oil, sea salt, and pepper – recipe here – and served it with grapefruit and a grilled cheese sandwich. I made the sandwich with leftover bread from the birthday party, covered it in mozzarella and cooked it in olive oil and garlic. It was a yummy lunch; and would have been even better if I hadn’t bought “imitation” cheese by accident!

I’ve been meaning to re-plant more radishes and fava beans, since I still have plenty of seeds – I just haven’t gotten to it yet. With spring almost here, I’m looking forward to expanding my garden and planting new things. I’m a novice gardener, so it’s a fun learning experience!

Readers: how are your gardens coming along?