Gardening on the Cheap

Hmm... five months since my last post. I guess to tell you it's been a busy and stressful spring and summer would perhaps be unnecessary? :-) I do want to share some quick photos of this year's garden though.

We didn't have much available cash, but needed to section off part of the yard to prevent dogs from peeing on our plants. Our fence needed to be cheap and non-permanent, since the site of the garden this year will likely not be repeated (hopefully soon this spot is where my new studio will be built). I was dubious at first when Matt proposed a fence built of pallets, but as usual, he pulled it off.

Not the prettiest thing I've ever seen, but functional, and totally free. :-)

Zucchini in the front, tomato in the back

I didn't even think I could grow full-sized tomatoes in Humboldt without a greenhouse, but assuming these things actually ripen, we're going to have a ton of them - the plant is almost as tall as me, and it's tipped over it's tomato cage so many times, I gave up and just propped it up with garbage cans. Classy, right?

Cukes and more cukes

Pumpkin

Zucchini

Yellow squash

Dahlias

Last night I made vegan zucchini alfredo with zucchini and basil fresh from the garden, zucchini bread (more of our own zucchini), and apple crisp with apples from one of our trees. It was all yummy but I think I enjoyed looking at these even more than eating the food -

There's something so great about flowers straight from our own garden. Once we get more settled and our landscaping is more established, I can't wait to put in a bigger garden with berries and lots more flowers!

One problem we discovered is that our soil is apparently low in calcium. We had some problems with some of our zucchini rotting on the plant, and all of our fruit seems to be growing and ripening quite a bit more slowly than we expected. We have applied a calcium-rich fertilizer a few times and I think it's helped somewhat, but once we figure out where the permanent garden location will be, I guess we are supposed to mix some lime into the soil?