An update on my organic garden

In my blog entry on April 17, I shared my sudden urge to plant an organic garden at the side of my house. Two months have passed and, as you can see from the photo above, my garden is doing really well despite getting less than 4 hours of direct sunlight each day. I have already harvested the equivalent of four heads of lettuce. I could have harvested even more but the slugs arrived to do some harvesting of their own. I have had to resort to the natural pesticide technique of putting beer in a shallow cup to get rid of them. Of course, because I want my garden to be totally organic, I faithfully used organic beer. I have also harvested small amounts of the parsley, rosemary and thyme that I planted as seedlings. My favorite herb is basil so I planted these from seed but the seedlings are so far only one inch high. This week I will be able to harvest six moderate-sized heads of broccoli. I am going to make Mollie Katzen’s broccoli forest recipe with them. I had planned to pull out the broccoli stems after removing the heads but a friend told me that if I just leave them another head will grow up in its place. Bonus! I planted cauliflower at the very same time as the broccoli but the cauliflower heads haven’t appeared yet. Similarly, my peas are coming up nicely but the beans are way behind. I would have expected that because they are in the same plant family (just like the cauliflower and broccoli), that their growing times would be similar. Mother nature is full of surprises. Another surprise is the zucchini, which is literally taking over the garden because I didn’t leave enough space for it. I have made notes to double the zucchini bed next year. I spent $40 on seeds and seedlings for my garden. So far, I have harvested about $10 worth of plants. At this point it seems promising that I will at least break even on my initial cash outlay (especially given that 50% of the $40 was for perennials like the rhubarb and herbs that will not require a purchase next year). Of course, my primary motivation to start a garden was not to save money but to do my tiny bit to offset the tremendous annual loss of agricultural land, educate my kids about growing food, and become a much more active participant in nature. Happy gardening to all of you who have similarly experienced a change in the color of your thumbs.