How does your garden grow?

One of the things we have always wanted but couldn't have, because we have lived in rental housing almost all of our married life, was a vegetable garden . This year we decided that we would do our best to have a garden even if we had to grow one miniature tomato plant in our kitchen window. I saw a program on PBS that showcased gardening in England where they have extremely small yard space and yet they have huge gardens. They did it by growing almost all of their vegetables in pots. I would have thought that pots would not give the roots enough room but some of their large plants were in very small pots. Well, we thought we would give it a try.

We started some tomato plants in our kitchen window and when the weather was right we planted them in pots in our front yard. On the last day of school Dakota brought home a corn seed that she had sprouted in school as part of a project so we let her plant it in one of the pots too. Then about a week later Elizabeth and Rebecca came home from a church activity with some squash seedlings and we planted those as well. Before we knew it we had a decent sized little garden in our front yard. The biggest problem we encountered was the wind. Once the plants reached a certain size they could not stand up to the wind. (With the exception of the large pot on the end. It never had a problem with the wind.) Sometimes we would have to bring the plants into the carport to protect them. I'm sure our neighbors thought we were crazy and all of them were curious to see if we really could get a garden to grow in pots. Sometimes I did feel like a fool and wondered if we would get anything to grow as well, but we did get them to grow and we had fun doing it. We didn't have total success but we will take what we have learned this year and add to it next year. The girls had fun watering the plants (there wasn't a need for weeding, yeah) and kept asking when they were going to get to eat the vegetables. They love picking the ripe tomatoes everyday and count how many more we have that have yet to ripen. We feel very blessed with our garden.

Here is our little pot garden. We have 5 pots of tomatoes, 1 corn, and 3 squash.

Our tomatoes did the best. I did have one tomato horn worm that found its way in to the pot. Other than that the only other obstacle was the wind. We've had a good harvest.

The girls couldn't tell us what kind of squash they had brought home so it was "surprise squash" for a while. We did determine that it was yellow squash. We had lots of flowering but very few squash buds. Two of the buds grew to about 1 1/2 in. in length but then they would just die. I don't know for sure why they couldn't survive but my theory is that the pots were not big enough to handle squash.

The corn plant was the hardest to keep upright. Any slight wind would take it down. I think it was blown over one too many times because the two ears of corn that were growing nicely just stopped growing one day. I also found a grasshopper chowing down on the stalk. Dakota was disappointed but understands that we did our best. I would think either a bigger pot for corn next time or just leave it to row gardening. We will still use the stalk as a fall decoration though.

I was home alone with Megan a week ago and was out gathering tomatoes. I washed one off and gave it to her to play with. She rolled it around for a few minutes like a ball and then decided to take a bite. She got a big eyed look and then just started devouring the tomato as if it were the last food she was going to eat. I almost didn't get a picture of her eating it because she was eating it so quickly. The other girls were sad they missed it and kept asking me to give her another one. This morning I sat down with a bowl of tomatoes for breakfast and Megan saw them. She got very excited and asked for one. When she was done she asked for a second one. I can't believe she ate them both. She asked me for a third but I said no because she was already covered in tomato junk and I thought two was enough. She didn't like that idea. I guess we grew another tomato lover as well with our garden.