half a garden

The phrase "a little too little a little too late" springs to mind...

We're a little late getting started with our garden this year. Frankly, Buster and I aren't very good at the whole garden thing. Neither of us did much gardening growing up. There's a nice garden plot in our back yard, but I pretty much ignored it first few years I owned the house. When Buster moved in he not only performed an amazing transformation on the lawn, he also convinced me that it might be fun to have a real garden instead of a weed patch with a few perennial herbs left from the previous owner.

This year we're getting a very very late start. We've both been quite busy with work and fishing trips and bike rides and softball and various other things. Buster borrowed the neighbors tiller and turned over the garden patch a couple weeks ago, then he left for a week of carp fishing and I got busy with work and thoughts of the garden didn't cross my mind. We finally realized this past week that it was time to pooh or get off the pot. Weed patch or late garden? Last chance.


Yesterday we ran out to our favorite gardening store, Downtown Home and Garden. They usually have purple seed potatoes. Potatoes are pretty much our staple garden crop, especially the purple ones because they're so hard to find in the store. Sadly, this year, we were too late for purple potatoes. In fact, we were too late for almost everything at Downtown Home and Garden. We had to go to another gardening store for plants and Buster ordered potatoes online. So, until the potatoes arrive next week, we have half a garden.


We have, on the left, horseradish that we stared the first year we planted the garden. We harvested the two in front last fall but they popped right back up again this spring. If ever we decided to eradicate the horseradish I think we would have a very difficult time of it. In the back, there are two mounds, one for zucchini and one for summer squash. We're starting these from seed and crossing our fingers. Next to the horseradish we've got bell peppers (Buster didn't want these but I insisted) and jalapeño peppers. And in the cages are tomatoes, one regular tomato and two cages of cherry tomatoes. We've been trying to jury rig something to hold up tomato plants for two years now and finally we broke down and bought the cages. We also have a few herbs awaiting a nice pot. I wanted to put the herbs in the garden but Buster was afraid they'd take over and now that we have everything else planted I'm worried we won't have enough room for our potatoes as it is. So I shall pot the herbs in a great big pot that I can bring indoors in the winter.

Our neighbor has an amazing garden. He's the one that convinced us we should get straw for mulch to keep the weeds down. He's also shared extra plants with us in years past and we gave him extra potatoes two years ago. I don't think he ever planted potatoes before that. Here's his lovely garden:

I took this from my backyard and you probably can't see much through the play set, but it's all green and growing in nice neat rows and the tomatoes have big sturdy cages and it just puts us to shame. I have a terrible case of garden envy!

Grow, baby pepper plant, grow! We have a lot of catching up to do!