Dear Readers,

Here is a brief timeline update on the gardening endeavors…

March

At the very end of March we planted our onions. It was funny…imagine super tiny, little bite sized, adolescent onions, and placing them with their little rooty parts down, and the pointy part up. They were cute! We made rows of them, and dug deep enough only so that they were just covered. They were placed about four inches apart from one another. They ended up occupying 99.9% of the section of garden we were using…the other .1% was a small row of lettuce. 

We actually had so many onions, that we ran out of space and grew slightly tired of what seemed like babying them (did they really need four inches? Wouldn’t two suffice?). So, we dug a big, shallow hole, and threw the remaining 30 or so throughout. Not what you are supposedly supposed to do…but we shall see what happens!

Our tomato plants have also begun to sprout!! And…that is it. Eggplants, nothing. Cabbage, nothing. Peppers, nothing. But progress is being made! At least something is growing.

April

Remember those neglected onions we threw in a hole? Welp, they are surviving and thriving. After an intense rain storm, our onions are growing like crazy!! 

All of our seedlings are also sprouting! Cabbage (I have never seen baby cabbage sprouts before…cute baby капуста), peppers, and eggplants are all doing decently well. They do look a little pale though…I don’t think they get enough sun from where we positioned them in the house…

May~ The Beginning

Early May has been very eventful.  William and I planted our tomato seedlings in two rows at the very back of both raised beds. We then made a structure for the tomatoes to grow up out of wood posts and string. William’s tomato seedlings look better than mine…but I think that is only ‘cause he picked the pretty ones. I got the runts. 

In the far, far garden (the one I will probably forget about and it will become overcome with vengeful weeds) we planted green beans and cucumbers. Both apparently need a decent amount of space to grow…but I doubt all of the seeds will actually survive. So I crammed them all in there. Cucumber seeds were planted about four inches apart, and the green bean seeds were planted about three. The green beans get extra treatment however, since they grow up. I made a teepee contraption to help the vines grow up to the wire fence. I am also curious to see how that will work out…I have a feeling that one good wind storm is all it will take to destroy the whole endeavor. 

The cabbage seedlings were also planted! They were scattered amongst the blueberry bushes. I am hoping for them to grow into big, beautiful, bodacious cabbages, so I gave them all ample room to swell. 

The carrot and yellow squash seeds were planted in the front of the raised beds. The carrot seeds were so tiny!!  They also required too much patience to plant each seed in its individual little hole. So I threw a bunch together at a time. I planted each conglomerate mass of carrot seeds three inches from each other. The squash seeds were bigger, so I was more generous with my time. Each seed was planted about six inches from the other (plus some random squash seeds I just stuck in places…I am starting to see this as ‘survival of the fittest.’ If those seeds want to grow into a squash, they gotta work for it.)

After the Frost of May…

Remember how William planted all the pretty tomatoes? Well, they were weak. And died. Their death did allow room for our pepper plants who can now share their support fence to grow on. Everything happens for a reason! That being said, the pepper sprouts and eggplant sprouts have officially been planted. There was no real rhyme or reason to how I really planted them…I gave them decent space to grow I suppose…and now they are no longer sitting next to the window in our dining room. So I’m happy. The weather should be getting warmer now, and we are due for some decent rain storms. Some may not survive anyway. And we will eat the ones that do! Such a brutal life for a vegetable plant….

End of May

The onions are dead. They were too needy and required too much water…so now all that remains are stringy, brown, broken stem things, and squishy, decomposing bulbs. I don’t have a picture to share of their demise, but I am sure that you can independently conjure an image of what deceased, soggy onions look like.

The experiment continues!! 

Thanks for reading this little side adventure of self-sustainability!

Sincerely,

Shelby Aldrich