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Yay! It’s Springtime, and we just started planting our vegetable garden a few weeks ago. Nothing is more rewarding than eating fresh vegetables grown in your home garden. Not to mention how much more delicious and flavorful home-grown organic vegetables are than the ones from the supermarket. Yum!
The first thing we planted was Lettuce for delicious salads. We planted leaf lettuce, red and green, Butterhead lettuce for a good crunch, and of course lots of arugula for a nice spiciness in any salad. Lettuce grows very fast in early spring when it’s still cool at night with ample amounts of rain and some beautiful sunshine. We are already getting a little lettuce for salads with plenty more to come. The tomatoes were planted shortly after the lettuce, as soon as it was warm enough overnight not to shock the tender starts (not less than 45 degrees). The only shame is that the lettuce will be done long before the tomatoes are ready to start harvesting. We usually like to grow a second and third batch of lettuce, but it just doesn’t do as well during the heat of the summer. When we planted the tomatoes, we also put in some snap peas and bush beans, both are doing great. It is so exciting for me to watch little starters become big plants. The snap peas are going wild right now and starting to climb the metal fencing we planted them next to for support.
Now that it is getting warmer overnight, it is time for squashes, peppers, and cucumbers. I have planted these too early in the past, and they didn’t die, but they became stunted and just didn’t do anywhere near as well as they could have. So I try to make sure it doesn’t get below 50 degrees overnight by checking my weather app a good 10 days out. If it does get that cold out, I will cover them overnight in clear plastic to protect them from the chilly morning.
I bought some asparagus starts this year. They are really bare roots that you plant by completely burying them with a couple of inches of soil, and when they start breaking through the ground, you would add another inch or two of soil. They like it moist but well draining, and I’m told that it will take a few years before they start yielding multiple stalks. I can hardly wait to see how this gardening experiment pans out.
I almost forgot to mention my beloved beets. One of my favorite vegetables, they go great on salads or as a side dish, served warm or cold. I planted extra last year so I could have some to pickle and preserve by canning for the winter months. Boy, was that a treat! I hope to do the same this year as well. I left a half dozen beets in the ground (the smallest ones) as an experiment to see if they would get any bigger. They did grow a bit larger, but much to my surprise, they started going to seed this spring. I had always just bought beet seeds in the past and had never even thought of where the beet seeds came from. One more aha moment in the garden!
All the veggies I have referred to are annuals, except for the asparagus. Asparagus is a perennial, which means it keeps coming back each year without having to replant it. Other perennials we have in our garden are strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. I just mentioned canning some beets and just how wonderful it was to have those to savor over the winter months. So this year, I would like to try making some strawberry and raspberry jams to preserve. Not only will those go into my food storage, but they also make great gifts for friends and family. I have cherished a gift I have received like that in the years past, so most others will as well.
We just started canning items from the garden a few years back, so we are still total rookies at it. We started by making some pickles out of an abundance of cucumbers we had about three summers ago. They weren’t the best pickles I’ve ever had, but they were edible. Last year’s batch was much better than the first one. I really think it is about finding a recipe you like. There are literally thousands of pickle recipes out there on the web, so have fun experimenting with it.
To wrap this post up, don’t be afraid to experiment in your garden, it has taught me so much over the years. I have read many articles and watched countless YouTube videos about gardening, and the one thing I can tell you is that everybody has their own little tips and tricks that may or may not work for you. So the best teacher really is trial and error, just keep experimenting, and you will find a great deal of satisfaction and joy, just as we have. Happy Gardening!