In Spring as soon as the weather started warming up, I had a bug to plant a garden. Not sure why, but I just HAD to have one. I had a raised garden bed box built and I carried 10 bags of dirt down there myself and guilted others into carrying another 6. It didn't fill up the box, but I honestly didn't care. (My yard is huge and you can't easily get to the bottom level with any kind of wheeled device.)I ran to Lowe's and bought several different plants to stick in my half filled garden box. I planted a tomato, three strawberry, six cauliflower, one cantelope and one cucumber (I thought it was a zucchini). I wasn't sure if anything would actually grow since I have heard tons of stories about how you just can't have a garden in Bend without a greenhouse. I figured this was my experiment so we would see what happened.
Well, things kind of exploded. My strawberry plants had a ton of little berries on them, but the birds ate most of them. That's ok, I'm willing to share. My cauliflower are huge, but I don't see a head of cauliflower anywhere. My tomato plant grew so big that it now covers most of the planter
box. And the zucchini plant that I thought I planted turned out to be a cucumber plant and I found three huge cucumbers down there today.That tomato plant alone has about 50 little and large tomatos on it that are in various stages of growth. There is one that is just a few days from total ripe so I can put it on Katya's sandwich for the first day of school next week.
Now I need to fill in the rest of the dirt that needs to be there and I will plan out my garden a little better next year. I'm thinking I need to spread things out a bit more. Next year - heirloom corn!!
4 comments:
Oh heck yeah, you can have a garden in Bend! The growing season is just absurdly short, so you have to be careful! :-)
Next year I want to try "square foot gardening" ... it's supposed to be great!
Hummm.. you are being smart to save your $$$ and being organic with all of your fruits and vegetables. It also will save you some gas from traveling to the grocery stores.
Have you thought about growing sunflowers? This would be so popular for the teenagers, including Katya. Not only for the teenagers, it can be used for the salad as well.
I'm all about radishes. As in "radishes are about all that do really well". But I've managed some killer lettuces (loose leaf) and the swiss chard looks great.
We Bend Gardeners need to stick together!
Oh, Deby. Your garden looks great! You are not allowed to visit my yard until after the first frost. I'll use that as an excuse for my failed gardening. I have much, much to learn about Bend gardening.
I've already learned to buy the produce from people who know what they're doing.
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