It occurred to me today, while I was harvesting tiny cherry tomatoes and tufts of parsley, that I haven’t written a garden update in months. This is quite a change from the first few months I had my plots: I took photos of virtually every change: sprouts peeking through the soil, leaves unfurling, vines climbing. I celebrated each pea pod and jalapeno as though it was the first I’d ever seen. And why not I’m growing some of my own food! A feat that would hardly be possible without my two little community garden plots.

I’ve always thought the idea of community gardens was a great one, but having now experienced one first-hand, I’m a total convert. I wish every neighborhood, subdivision, and city block could have one. Many of you probably don’t have a community garden easily accessible to you… but many of you might. And if you have any interest in learning to grow a little food, I highly recommend you join.

Need some convincing Well. I can talk all day about why community gardens are great. But these, certainly, are the top ten perks.

In no particular order:

It’s Really, Really Affordable

Every garden is a little different, but most charge “plot-owners” a small monthly or annual fee for space in the garden. The fee at my garden is almost mind-bogglingly small: $12-$25 per year. Per. Year. The garden is funding, primarily, from grants, donations from local garden clubs, and the North Carolina State Extension Office. Many of the seeds and seedlings that we plant are provided by fellow gardeners with greenhouses, and rich compost is donated to the garden a couple times a year. Aside from stakes and cages for vines and tomatoes, my out-of-pocket costs have been almost non-existent.

Shared Supplies

Our garden has a shed full of shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, and gardening gloves. We have an onsite well with hoses long enough to reach all corners of the garden. The entire garden is encircled by a deer fence. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to buy those things just for me Neither do I. But I know it’s A LOT. Sharing supplies not only saves each gardener lots of money, but the benefit to all of us is greater than what we could afford on our own.

There’s No Better Place To Learn

I’m a frequent victim of my own overly-ambitous plans, so I appreciate that my 4’x10′ plots keep me in check. These small plots are large enough to grow a variety of foods, but small enough that they are easily manageable. Plus, and I know this sounds awkward, the relatively small financial investment helps me deal with my failures a little more easily. I just brush off my slightly-bruised ego, replenish the soil, and put something else in the ground to see how it works instead.

Shared Knowledge

Speaking of learning: I consult a lot of web forums, gardening books, and blogs for info on growing food. But the best sources of info, hands down, are my fellow gardeners. Many of them have been growing food for decades, both in small gardens and in vast fields. And here’s the truly amazing thing: after just a year, I sometimes surprise myself when I am able to answer the questions of gardeners even newer than me.

Shared Effort

I’ve frequently heard growers lament the fact that summer vacations are virtually impossible. Plants must be harvested, watered, and weeded every day or two from the day the seeds go in the ground. Lucky for me, there are two dozen other people who garden within feet of my plots, and a quick e-mail to our listserv ensures that my plants won’t die while I take a two-week vacation in July.

A Daily Dose of Outside

A day in the box office can be stressful. Phones might ring off the hook, deadlines rapidly approach, and it’s shocking how much one nasty customer can ruin your day. But at the end of each day, I can take a few minutes outside. A few minutes to take care of my plants, to listen to the birds and crickets flitting about the garden, and to put in just a bit of physical labor dragging hoses all over the place after spending all day at a desk. I won’t lie, there are some days I wish I could just go straight home, but after arriving at the garden, I’m always grateful I didn’t skip the trip.

The Food

This should really go without saying, but it’s definitely a major reason I love my community garden. I’ve been tracking my harvests, and to estimate their values, I’ve been comparing the harvests to what I would pay for the same thing at the farmers markets. The results are staggering. In 80 square feet, I’ve harvested almost $500 worth of produce since January. Fresh, organically grown, produce. In addition to the food I’ve planted myself, we have a giant wall of blackberry bushes along the fence, and blueberries as well. A fig tree planted this year should fruit within just a few seasons. These fruits, impossible to grow in each owner’s plot, are available to all of us.

The Sense of Accomplishment

Or really, it’s the actual accomplishment. There’s nothing quite like the excitement of cultivating a plant from a tiny seed to a mature, vegetable-producing machine. Or the thrill of pulling up garlic that’s been in the ground for eight months to discover that IT WORKED. Yeah, there are failures (I’ve lost my zucchini plant two years in a row), but successes have far-outweighed the failures.

Beautiful Potential

I joined my garden when it was very young. It still is. But our collection of plots occupies a tiny corner of a large plot of land, and the plans for the future of the garden are incredible. An orchard, a demonstration garden, an outdoor pavilion for garden meetings and celebrations, more plots for even more gardeners to grow… I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

The Community

I sought out a community garden because I thought it was the best way I could grow food while I was living in an apartment. And it is. However, I was not expecting to so enjoy thecommunity part of that garden. I look forward to our monthly garden meetings as much as any other social gathering. It’s great to see a friendly face or two when I’m out watering, to hear about their plots, and to swap some produce if each of us has something extra. We celebrate together as a group, collaborating on harvest dinners and volunteer days. We struggle together against colonies of ants, vicious squash bugs, and a wily groundhog. We learn together how to help tomatoes survive the heat and how to pickle okra.

Community gardens are catching on. Empty lots in urban areas are being reclaimed and now flourish with flowers and vegetables. If you do have one near you, seriously: check it out. See how long the wait list is. Or be really bold: join up with your neighbors and see about starting one of your own! I do hope that someday, I’ll have enough space that I can garden at  my house, with more space, to grow even more of my own food. But at the moment, I couldn’t ask for a better deal.

You guys.

You see that garlic I grew that garlic! Me and eight months of nature magic, that is.

When I scored a plot on my community garden, I was excited for the salad greens, the squash, all the fresh goodies. But one of my major goals was to learn to grow some of the staples and storage goods that I pull off the shelf before anything else when it’s time to make a meal. Garlic is, perhaps, the poster child of that concept: I mince up at least a clove or two in just about everything.

One of the vendors at the farmers market grows copious amounts of garlic, selling the trimmed and cured heads by the pound during the summer and fall, so I picked his brain one day last September about planting garlic myself. Armed with new knowledge and a few heads of garlic, I spent a crisp October morning starting what would become a significant test of patience.

Most garlic is grown by planting a single clove for each head you hope to produce. Planted in the fall, garlic grows slowly throughout the winter. It’s a remarkably hearty plant. When most of the garden plots around mine were dormant or inhabited only by kale, my perky little garlic plants stood tall and leafy.

As the stalks thickened and the leaves multiplied, I was sure an excellent crop of garlic was on the way. But then, leaves started to brown…

What had I done? Did I not give them enough water What the hell was going on down there Unlike tomatoes or peppers, which show quite visibly if their edibles are going to fail, the garlic was (hopefully) snuggling in the dirt several inches below the surface. I didn’t want to risk pulling it up too early just to see if something was going wrong.

Thankfully, the internet was ripe with information. Apparently, dead leaves are a good thing, and a cue to strop watering so the heads can begin to cure. Once the garlic sends up scapes, long swirly tendrils that will ultimately flower and drain the garlic’s nutrients if not trimmed, it’s almost harvest time!

Despite the immense curiosity I’d developed over the last few months, I was nervous about digging up the first one. I feared tiny, stunted heads, or worse, shriveled versions of the cloves I’d planted several months earlier. But as usual, plants do what they do very well, and I was not disappointed.

They worked! But still, the process was not quite done. At this stage, the garlic is mature: I easily could have peeled apart a head and used the cloves as I would any other garlic. But to keep it around for months at a time, the garlic needed to dry in a cool, dry, and dark place.

A shelf in the laundry room suddenly became a makeshift home for 35 heads of garlic and their two-foot long stalks for about a month (the first two weeks of which my apartment reeked of garlic). I learned that garlic is best taken into the dark almost as soon as it’s pulled from the ground, with the roots and stalks still in place. So I left it alone, watched the leaves shrink and crisp until four weeks had passed.

Kinda icky, right Dripping as little dirt and leaf litter as possible, I gently hauled everything out to the balcony for a bit of cleaning. It turns out I don’t actually use my balcony for much leisure – it seems to be mostly a staging ground for food photos, gardening, and produce prep. I hope the people below me don’t mind the little bits of soil that so frequently fall through the wood planks…

Once the roots were removed and the dirt was brushed gently from the delicate wrapper garlic so conveniently provides for itself, most garlic is then trimmed from its stalks and sold head by head. But to get the most bang for my buck with my first garlic harvest, I wanted to try something a little more crafty.

My garlic braid went pretty well, for a time, but was a little hodge-podgy by the end. Okay okay, the last few cloves are just tied to the top. there’s only so many brittle, breaking stalks one can swing into a braid at once.

And here we are! Eight months of planting, watering, waiting, curing, drying, cleaning, and braiding later, I have a tidy little garlic braid hanging in my pantry. It’s gonna be a tasty few months!

Congrats to Jessica, the lucky winner of two awesome railing planters!

I’ve never grown my own food yet (Sad!), but when I start, I’ll want strawberries, green peppers, and peaches. How long it would take for a peach tree to fruit I have NO IDEA. But it would be delicious.

I’m not sure green peppers would be successful in these pots, and I’m 100% certain a peach tree won’t fit, but I wager strawberries might actually work!

Thanks to all who participated… the array of food you want to grow is intriguing and inspiring!

When we moved to North Carolina, I had some plans for our apartment on which I was unwilling to budge:

1. I would obtain a dining table and chairs.
2. I would paint some wall, any wall, some pretty color other than white.
3. I would grow some food on my dang porch.

Quick trips to Ikea and Home Depot made it easy to accomplish the first two goals, but it took me a couple of months to figure out the best way to complete the third. For one thing, I still, still, after two years of low-sun apartments in DC, struggled to get direct beams to my balcony for more than a few hours a day. To complicate matters further, the lovely lattices on our porch railings broke up what little sun that did reach the balcony: an excellent situation for lounging on the porch without getting too hot, but not so great for keeping plants alive.

Containers on the railings had to be the key. But alas! Every style I could find at stores in my area was designed with a bolt or a screw or some other attachment mechanism I’m sure our property managers would not appreciate.

But then.

I found them online! Two feet wide, six inches deep, and adjustable to whatever width of balcony railing you want to hang them on.  I bought some lettuce, some mums (to feel fancy!), and plopped ’em into some soil. By the tim spring rolled around, well, I had expanded my little fleet to the size it was when I first introduced this hodge-podge little garden last April.

I had high hopes, lots of seedlings, and a waaaaay too small watering can. But at the time, it was the only option in front of me for growing food, so I took my chances and hoped that something would grow.

Oh what a little time and a little experience can teach. It wasn’t long before I discovered I had a couple of problems dooming my tiny garden.

Not Enough Sun

No matter how I sliced it, no matter how precariously I perched containers on the corner pillar and bungee-corded them in place, on the best of days my plants were getting four hours of sun. Which was great for lettuce and tolerable for herbs, but not at all acceptable for sun-thirsty plants like peppers and tomatoes.

Not Enough Space

It’s hysterical to me now that I planted a zucchini in a 5″ pot. I confess, I was utterly naive about the size to which a zucchini grows. Having now spent one summer growing a zucchini in my community garden plot, I realize that the plant had no hope of fruiting. See the seedling on the right up above Yeah, this was my community garden zucchini after just a couple of weeks in the ground:

Yikes. Talk about a “what was I thinking?!” moment?

So this year, I approached my little balcony garden with a little less vigor and a little more knowledge.

The only successful plants I had from my little containers last year were greens and herbs, so I just decided to stick with those. Lettuce grows happily with only a half day of sun, and it’s handy to have some parsley growing on the porch for spontaneous cooking projects.

I feel so fortunate that I lucked into a community garden before the space-starved, sun-starved plants met their ends. At this point,  I could honestly get by with out growing anything on the porch at all these days. But these little troughs of soil are important to me. They help remind me that even with small amounts of sun and unfavorable planting conditions, it is possible for me to grow my own food. Those of us living in apartments and in cities need not be intimidated by the fact that we don’t live on acres of fertile land with plows and shovels and barns at our disposal. You can sow seeds in any patch of soil or sunlight you might have access to; you’ll be amazed at the harvest you’ll reap.

And I wanna help you get started! I’m giving away one set of these great little containers (which are flat on the bottom so they can also be used in a windowsill or on a porch) to someone who wants to grow something of their own. They won’t grow any huge veggies, but they are fantastic for growing greens, flowers, and herbs.

Note: The manufacturers of these containers have no idea who I am. I just really like their containers, want to share, and am feeling generous.

How to Enter CLOSED
Leave a comment on this post answering the question:

What are three things that you wish you could grow for yourself Or, if you already have a garden of your own, what are the homegrown veggies you never want to buy from the store again?

Leave your answer by 11:59pm EST on Sunday, April 29. Winner will be announced on Monday! (So sorry to my international readers, I can only ship within the US – shipping is so expensive these days!)

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy some time in my own little porch garden. Good luck everyone!

Wide, wild oceans full of life both familiar and mysterious. Weather as balmy and blissful as sliding into sleep, and weather more destructive than any machine conceived by humans. Lush forests, scorched desert sands, and iced peaks extending to the very limits of our reach.

But despite these mighty landscapes, I am equally, or perhaps more, impressed by seeds. These tiny, humble vessels of plant life hold within them delicate flowers, towering trees, and of course, the many many many foods we eat.

Our February community garden meeting hailed the arrival of the seeds ordered in bulk by our garden coordinator. Just a fraction of the order was put on the table; the seeds ready for planting, both indoors and out, as the weather in North Carolina begins to warm. Each gardener took a turn examining the varieties available and carefully pouring their share of seeds into tiny envelopes, and a sense of anticipation filled the room.

I can see how dangerous seed catalogs must be, especially for a novice gardener like myself. The ten or so varieties I gathered from the meeting will more than fill my beds for the spring, but that doesn’t stop me wanting more. I should plant potatoes! I want 10 rows of peas! I’ll feed our little household for a year on nothing but veggies from my 80 square feet of soil!

Not really. Not yet.

But it’s fun to think about, and every season of planting teaches me new lessons for future gardens I may tend. I’m even trying my hand at jump-starting some seeds that are too tender, as of yet, to plant outdoors, in a tiny plant nursery in my apartment.

In a perfect world, this little tray of soil could sit in a sunny windowsill, safe from the cold that thwarts seedlings as night but basking in the sunshine of the clear February days. Unfortunately, this world is not perfect (shocker), so these seeds will have to make due with a grow light perched above them.

Last year’s attempt at a little nursery like this was an utter failure. I’m hoping for better luck this time around.

And the seeds outside Well, despite the little reaches into 70 degree weather we’ve had in the last couple weeks, I have still been preparing myself for garden failure at the mere thought of tucking the little seeds under a half inch of earth, giving them a quick shower, and then waiting to see if they make it.

But as they have done for eons, these crafty little guys have already started to emerge.

Pure. Magic.

It’s been over two months since I toted my camera out to the community garden for an update. The days have been short, the need for watering slim, and I’ve only marched into the garden with a harvest basket once every couple of weeks.

January is a quiet month for many gardeners. Even if snow doesn’t fall, the rich soils of most garden plots are firm with frost or support only cover crops. The relatively warmer climate where I currently reside, however, offers more fresh winter produce than I’ve ever experienced. I grew accustomed to seeing it at the farmers market last winter, but find myself astonished that with minimal gardening knowledge and care, I’ve been able to harvest lots of vegetables in the last few weeks.

I’ve been looking forward to harvesting these carrots since I left for my holiday vacation in mid-December. They won’t win anything at a county fair, but they taste phenomenal despite a their short, stubby appearance.

I knew, upon my return from Colorado, that the carrots would be there. But I totally thought the broccoli was done. I had sheared off bushy stalks of it a week or so before I left and expected  some sad, naked looking plants when I came back in the new year, but look! New little florets had sprouted up all over the central stalk, yielding a batch of broccoli that didn’t even require chopping when I got home. Low maintenance veggies are their best.

I’ve been surprised, as well, by the survival of the green onions. Harvesting just a few a week, they should pretty much last me until it’s time to plant them again.

There are still a few funny looking cabbages growing, as well. I have four or five wrinkly Savoy Cabbages still balling up against the chilly night air, but I have NO clue what to do with them once they are ready to harvest. It’s on my list of things to learn.

And then there’s this guy, my last oxheart cabbage. Which I planted on a whim and really looks more like Audrey II than anything else. Cole slaw?

There really is something special about growing your own food, even if it’s only a small portion. I savor every carrot a little bit more, appreciate each leafy stalks for its contribution of something edible, and watch in wonder as the January chill still allows for food so fresh. Soon, I’ll be planting new seeds, nurturing them to adolescence while the winter still persists, and finishing off the rest of this winter harvest.

In the meantime, however, I’m enjoying every last bite.

I spent the whole summer being amazed at the fervor with which tiny seeds sprang into sunflowers so tall I couldn’t reach the blooms, basil so prolific I’ll eat pesto all winter, and okra stalks so thick I had to saw through them to prepare the soil for something new.

That amazement has turned into a jaw-dropping situation this fall.

Is this what you’re like when you have your first kid Utterly astonished and fishing for a camera every time it does anything?

A couple of months ago, I adopted an additional empty plot at my community garden, and on the advice from a North Carolina planting guide, I skeptically planted not one but two garden plots. In September. I repeat. September. Where I grew up we often get snow in September.

My skepticism, as usual, was complete lunacy. The freshly-planted plot…

… is now a lush jungle of deliciousness.

Fall in North Carolina has certainly taught me that good things are worth waiting for. Cooler weather comes later, the leaves turn later, the Halloween spirit even hit later.

So now I’m trying to be patient with my little crops, though there is some curiosity I cannot avoid. I keep pulling one carrot stem at a time out of the ground to see if they’re ready (they’re not). I’ve plucked a few pea pods off the plant just to see how big the peas are (they’re tiny). The pods that are mature barely make it off the plant, let alone to my kitchen, before their shells lie limp in my cup holder on the way home from watering.

But I’m scerrrd! What if it freezes?!?! What if all my hard work turns into a frosted trellis of pea shoots and frostbitten greens??

I really should know better. I shouldn’t get so stressed. There’s a reason that Durham can support a lush farmers market all year long. Dedicated growers, yes, but an amenable climate is hugely beneficial.

And so I wait. I wait for the carrots to resemble food more than gnarly roots. I wait for the broccoli to produce more than one floret per plant. I wait to harvest the peas until they’re you know, peas.  I wait till summer to harvest my own garlic (the anticipation may kill me). I wait for the cabbage to form a head before I turn it into Bierocks.

And in the meantime, I’ll enjoy what has finally arrived. And which was definitely worth waiting for.

Fall!

It has finally arrived. Though I’ve been unsuccessfully attempting to will it so over the last two weeks, a storm blew in on Thursday and brought with it a thirty degree temperature drop and a taste of delicious autumn.

I know that my brief escapades in denim and corduroy this weekend aren’t permanent and that it’s supposed to bounce back into the high 70s this week, but the effect will remain.

If  you know me even a little bit, I’ve probably discussed with uncanny fervor my love of fall. Absolutely my favorite season, no question. And there are so many ways to enjoy it!

Apple picking.

Pumpkin picking.

Pumpkin carving.

Pumpkin anything.

10,398 fall recipes, and an equal number for Halloween.

Halloween! Thanksgiving!

Corn mazes, hay rides, haunted trails, haunted houses, ghost tours!, amusement parks, baseball games. Halloween parties, Renaissance festival, a costume for each of those.  Appalachians for the leaves, farmers market for the food, and travel for the joy of sharing the season with friends and family. The color orange. The color brown. Chrysanthemums. Corn husks. Bountiful harvest of squashes, roots, apples, pears, cabbages, potatoes, and onions.

This year, for the first time, I’m adding a new one to my fall activity guide: fall garden! The garden I grew up with was winding down by this point in September, but here, I’ve only just put a new batch of seeds in the ground. I now have a second plot for the fall and winter, so in addition to mucking out some of the summer plants that have gone to seed, I spent a couple of very dirty mornings preparing the new bed, and my original one, for planting.

One of the benefits of a community garden is that there are all kinds of people who want to help out in all kinds of ways. Recently, a local composting company donated a massive pile of freshly composted, loamy, nutritious top soil to our garden for us to refill our plots. The catch is that it could not be directly deposited into the beds, that was up to me, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow.

Needless to say, there are not many progress shots of this process. I was hot and sweaty and covered with dirt, and to be honest, didn’t fancy pulling my camera into the muck with me. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one.

Behold! This is my new plot, full of soil, ready for whatever I wanted to plant.

Most of what can be planted in the fall here is also some of the first harvest we see in the spring. The growing season is so long that it allows for two plantings of broccoli, cabbages, peas, carrots, green onions, and leafy greens. In the spirit of experimentation, I tried them all, some from seedlings, some from seeds.

And look! Already, seeds are sprouting the seedlings are thriving, and I’m looking forward to a lot of fall produce!

But before I get too excited about what I’ll be pulling out of the ground in the coming weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about my first three months as a gardener, and how I fared with things I chose to plant.

Successes!

Basil

More successful than I could have possibly predicted, I now have enough pesto in my freezer to start a store. A pesto store. And as much as I like that, I think perhaps next year I’ll only plant three or four plants.

Cucumbers

I’ve almost forgotten now about the cucumbers I cultivated during June and July. Though I have some better ideas for how to grow them next year (better trellising, I think) I must place these firmly in the success category. The jars of pickles in my fridge stand as proof of that.

Jalapeños

Here’s another example of me getting caught off-guard with the bounty produced by these plants. I bought a 4-pack of seedlings from a vendor at the farmers market, and it only took a few weeks before I was already confronted with more of these hot little peppers than I knew what to do with. They were all smaller than what I’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the grocery store or even from other market vendors, but the flavor is excellent. Stay tuned for some jalapeño recipes in the coming days.

Anaheim Peppers (Green Chiles)

Similar to the jalapeños, I was surprised by the tenacity of this pepper plant. I only had one plant, but I’ve collected a couple dozen chiles over the last several weeks, and for many of them, I still don’t know what to do with them. These two are smaller than what I’ve seen before, but maybe I’ll make a tiny green chile casserole with them. Who knows.

Okra

When I first began picking pods off my two okra plants (which actually look more like small trees these days, as I can barely reach the new pods at the top) I was concerned that I would never have enough fresh okra at one time to make anything more than a sample size dish. I have learned that they had simply not yet peaked. Now, I can hardly keep up with it, with pods swelling dramatically due to the extra rain we’ve been getting. Very few bug problems, lots of tasty okra. Definitely a win!

Parsley

I haven’t talked much about my little parsley patch. Mostly because there just hasn’t been much interesting to say about it. Parsley is one of those herbs that seems to be in everything but never really gets a place in the spotlight. But I’ve taken several excellent cuttings for recipes like Penne alla Vodka  and Chèvre Stuffed Mushrooms, and it still seems to be going strong. Parsley, this is your moment, take a bow!

Semi-Successes

Zucchini

I had such high hopes for this guy. In this post, I confidently posited that zucchinis are great confidence builders, wow look at it grow, and all that. Aaaaaand then it died. Completely obliterated by squash bugs. I can’t call it a complete failure because I did harvest quite a few tasty zucchinis before it met its maker, but it also wasn’t the boon I was hoping for.

Tomatoes

Another high hope pair of plants that just sorta stared at me the whole summer. One plant seemed to bite the dust from the beginning. The other did produce a fair number of green little tomatoes, but only four or five made it to my kitchen before they were a) eaten by bugs b) stolen by humans c) victims of gravity, which caused more death by bugs. Brad confirms that the ones that did make it were fantastically delicious, but since we only ended up with a few, I think I need to brush up on tomato knowledge before next summer.

Green Bell Peppers

I honestly thought I wouldn’t get any bell peppers, but two of the four green bell plants finally produced something. I gathered about six smallish bells, and though they tasted good, two of the plants produced none at all, and the ones that did seemed to do so just to stop me from glaring at them every day.

Sunflowers

Okay, this was one of the things I was looking forward to most in my garden, from the moment I put the “Autumn Sunflower Mix” seeds in the ground. Imagine, if you will, tall green stalks exploding like fireworks at their tops in shades of gold, orange, magenta, and brown. My fantasies of luscious autumn bouquets were thwarted by the fact that I only got yellow sunflowers. To be fair, I did get two lovely cuttings of these sunny blooms, and they stood like beacons to the pollinators in the garden. But the results were far from what I had hoped for.

Utter Failures (so bad I don’t even have pictures)

Red Bell Peppers

Never got a single one. Ever.

Fingerling Potato

Planted this on a whim because there were some donated by another gardener. Nothing ever happened, except I think it’s leaves got chopped off my a weed-eater when someone was trimming grass near my plot. So much for whims.

Poblano Pepper (Tiburon Pepper)

So many blossoms, only one pepper. And it fell to the ground well before maturity and was attacked without mercy.

I’m thrilled that I had many more successes than failures, and I have high hopes for an even more productive garden next summer.

But in the meantime, I have other matters to attend to.

Like these.

Happy Autumn!

What are your favorite fall activities Your favorite autumn recipes?

It must be a curious sight indeed to drivers passing by to see me leaning against my car, swapping my flip-flops for gross-o rubber boots (which pair fabulously with my work clothes, I might add), spritzing every square inch of exposed skin with bug spray to ward off mosquitoes, and marching into the garden with a basket and some wrinkled gardening gloves.

My plot has grown and blossomed, but it’s not all sun beams and elegant arcs of water pouring from a brushed steel watering can. There’s been a tragedy.

During my week of vacation, an army of squash bugs infiltrated plot B2 and launched an aggressive assault on my thriving zucchini plant. I returned from Colorado with hopes of zucchinis to last me through the next several weeks, but unfortunately, the damage was done.

Sadly, the whole plant had to come up, leaving me with one, last, giant zucchini to remember it by. I know that everyone, human and bug alike, needs food, but I’m still annoyed. How did they multiply so fast?! Urg.

Fortunately, all is not lost. The zucchini may be gone, but the tomatoes are ripening, the okra pods are lengthening, and I finally have some bell peppers making an appearance on their stubbly little stalks.

And it’s not just veggies. The okra, for instance, has surprised me with stunning, delicate yellow blossoms. Who knew?

Plus, the sunflower saga continues. No blooms yet, but the heads are beginning to form, waaaaaaay up in the sky.

Seriously, they’re seven feet tall. I think the seed package said 4-6 feet. Surprise!

With luck, I’ll still be able to reach them when it’s time to snip a bouquet that promises an explosion of gold, orange, magenta, and pink to help ring in the fall.

But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Fall is still several weeks away, and even without the zucchini, there is still plenty of harvest to enjoy as the summer draws to a close. Already, I have more jalapenos than I know how to use (there are 23 in my fridge…. I was totally expecting like, 10 total) and the basil situation is getting a little absurd. I mean, can one have too much pesto?

I just may find out this summer.

A little over three weeks ago, I put my first plants into my new community garden plot. The little seedlings looked small and feeble outside the comfort of their little black plastic starting trays, so all I could do was cross my fingers, water daily, and hope they’d survive.

And survive they have. My little plot is now blossoming into dozens of shades of green. Tiny, pale green orbs have appeared on my adolescent tomato plants. Deep green leaves rimmed in violet are bursting daily from my stems of okra. Anaheim peppers, jalapeños, cucumbers, and parsley are about to reach their harvest points. The basil is growing so quickly I’ve already harvested enough for three batches of pesto (recipe coming soon, promise). And remember the leeeetle baby sunflower sprouts?

I’m excited. And so much more is on the way.

Zucchini, for example.

Best thing I’ve learned so far: if you are thinking of starting a garden and are feeling a little insecure about it, plant a zucchini.

O. M. G.

The rest of the garden is also doing pretty well, but the zucchini is the real confidence builder. It took a few days for this guy to get its footing, but man, once it did, zooooooom. It’s a jungle.

As consumers, we often see fruits and vegetables only in gleaming, multi-colored rows on grocery store shelves or in little blue cartons at the farmers market. It’s exciting to meet the green leafy plants that make that bounty possible.