I Will Soon Be Very Sick of Eating Tomatoes

Here at our housing complex run by Farm U, you can sign up to get a community garden plot. Since our existing outdoor space consists of (1) a concrete, fenced-in patio almost completely screened of sunlight; (2) a concrete patio that is regularly terrorized by the neighboring dogs (so much so, in fact, that we can't really use it at all - dog poo smells terrible); and (3) a small patch of land that I commandeered from our former neighbor that doesn't really belong to us, and which I already planted with sunflowers [Quick sunflower note: most of the sunflowers I planted in that spot died, since I waited too long to put them in the ground and they were all weak and falling over. I started some new sunflowers inside and planted those earlier. They are now flourishing], we jumped at the chance for a community spot.


After the-longest-winter-in-the-history-of-the-middle*, the weather finally calmed down right after Mother's day enough for us to go investigate our plot. We had asked for half a plot (about 8' x 16'), so were surprised when we were given a full plot (16' x 24'). We weren't sure what we were going to plant, but now we could plant even more of it.


Our first task was to put up a fence, since the rabbits around here are fruitful (and cotton-tailed cute) and deer live right next to our plot. After a trip to the local chain hardware store for supplies, we constructed a pretty sweet fence, using plastic stakes, wooden stakes, wood lathe, and 3-foot chicken wire. We're pretty confident that the fence will keep out rabbits, since we staked it down to the ground, but we're pretty sure the deer could just walk through it or jump it. We have some home remedy type ideas to keep them out, but we haven't done anything just yet - please let us know if you know of anything that might work.


After constructing the fence and raking out all the hay, we drove over to our local, actually local, plant nursery, which was super cool. We ended up buying a bunch of starts and seeds, most for about $1.50 each, some $1.50 for 3. That seemed cheap to me.


A couple days later, we got down to the plot, fence still standing, and put everything in the ground. We have lots of good stuff, too much of which to list, so here's the schematic we drew up after we planted:

(click on the picture to actually be able to read it)

And corresponding photo of the actual planted garden (looking southwest towards the big pumpkin):


Anyways, within 2 days of planting everything, we left town for a week to go to a wedding in Arizona. We were worried that everything would die from lack of water, but the opposite happened. It rained almost everyday we were gone, and now things are looking good. We already have some cayenne peppers that are maturing. The beans and peas are all coming up. The tomatoes look happy and we've had to pinch a few flowers already (although one of the Romas is dead, I think). The sunflowers are already ridiculously large. And that 'Big Pumpkin' - it's supposed to grow to 100-lbs. Only the watermelon doesn't look so happy right now. It's pretty exciting.

The only thing is that Kimberly left for Mexico today. She'll be there for 2 months, leaving me in charge of all garden matters, including pruning, weeding, eating, and (potentially) canning if the Romas decide to mature really fast. And as if to taunt me, we are having insane thunder storms right now, with the same predicted over the next few days. I'm a little worried that everything is going to drown now, rather than get killed by drought. This gardening thing is nerve wracking.

Anyways, I posted some pictures on Flickr and I will try to keep the blog updated as things progress. I also just got a call from a friend that he's been given permission to plant some stuff on a vacant lot near work, so I might put some more stuff in there, like more 100-lb pumpkins or huge watermelons. Because if there's anything I'll need, it's more produce.

*verified by real Midwesterner