Gardening for Health

As I (think) I mentioned before, I started a garden this year. It's my first ever, and due to my allergies we did a lot of container gardening so I could control/minimize my contact with grass and dirt and all sorts of that kind of stuff. The hubs helps with most of the hard labor, but I am an excellent waterer. :) Although there was a bit of start-up cost for the containers and soils and seeds, I hope that it ends up paying for itself with a lot of veggies and herbs! So far, the herbs are already proving to be a cost savings, and very handy to have when I want to flavor a recipe! Plus, eating fruits and veggies straight from the garden maximizes nutrient value as they are at their freshest and eaten quickly after picking.

I thought I would share some pix of how my garden is doing. Things are starting to flower and I am hopeful that in the next thirty days or so I will be able to start harvesting more than just herbs!

Tomato flower! From my understanding, we should have a tomato to harvest about thirty days after the bloom comes... which means we should have a tomato by early to mid July.

The large garden. Although we thought we were going to only container garden this year, we had no option but to make a plot in the yard due to overplanting in the containers (I couldn't just throw out all of the plants that were growing so well!) and buying extras from the farmer's market because the hubs wanted tomatoes earlier in the season and freebies from his mother. She gave us a purple tomato plant- can't wait to see how that turns out. Most of the plants in this garden are extra tomato and hot pepper plants that we had to weed out of their containers. Surprisingly, they all seem to have taken to the ground quite well and there don't appear to be an casualties. After this, it's survival of the fittest in my mind since we planted them in small groups not knowing if they would all take to the ground.

Green beans! I planted more in the large garden though I don't know if they will take, plus since I just planted them last week who knows if they will have enough time to get a crop. Sadly, the bunny rabbits in my yard have been eating the leaves of this plant, and I noticed today a few of the leaves off the top were completely eaten off. Sigh. So long as they don't eat the actual green beans I will be okay. There is nothing quite as good as a snappy green bean fresh from the garden.

My pepper flower. I think this is the green pepper plant. I can't wait for peppers!

Where all of the tomato plants started, Roma specifically. There are at least 8-10 plants in here. We actually had so many seeds that took we had to transplant the rest in to the big garden (as seen above). We will have more tomatoes than we know what to do with! Must learn how to can this year, I think.

Cucumbers! I love that when you get close to the plant you can smell the cucumber even though they aren't grown yet. Sprouts did shoot out from the buds earlier this week after a good rain storm. I'm excited for lots of cucumbers! Cucumber sandwiches are a summertime favorite of mine.

My lovely herb garden. Since taking this picture I have added a rosemary bush and sage. Forgot to plant sage and the rosemary I planted only produced two plants that aren't growing so well- hence the fact you can't see them!

Butternut squash- a staple for my carrot-free vegetable stocks and for wintertime risottos and soups. Two of these are squash, the other two are weeds. Haven't figured out which is which yet!