Last year, in a combined effort to get a better variety of vegetables in our diet, save money, and support local farmers, Janaury and I joined a local farming co-op. For something like $300 for the season, we could stop down at the North Market and pick up our weekly supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. To be honest, it started off kind of disappointing; Generally a handful of green beans, some beets and a bundle of lettuce. As the season went on, though, it was really cool to see all the neat stuff we got. Beans, peppers, leeks, fresh herbs, strawberries. And always with a little bundle of lettuce and a half-dozen eggs. Occasionally they would pack in something completely foreign to me, like swiss chard. What is a chard? I still don't know. But I do know that it came with a nice little letter from the farmer explaining how one might prepare it, if one were inclined to do so.
This year we decided to take advantage of the fact that we have a backyard that is all ours and do a little gardening of our own. If you've been following January's blog at all you've probably seen pictures of our progress to this point. If you haven't been following her account, I'll get you up to speed; This type of gardening, typically referred to as square foot gardening, basically allows one to grow plants that typically require a lot of ground space in individual square foot sized areas through the magic of expensive dirt. Actually, it wasn't that expensive. Just complicated. 3 parts peat moss, 3 parts vermiculite, 1 part cow manure, 1 part chicken manure, 1 part bat guano.
Bat guano. That's bat shit. We bought bat shit.
After mixing all that together (I'll fess up -- January did most of the hard labor) we threw it into these 2' x 4' raised boxes (so Gus can't get involved), planted our crops, and watered them daily. It's been surprisingly easy to keep them growing. So far we've only lost one plant -- a cucumber. And, quite frankly, I don't consider that much of a loss.
Being the big dork that I am, I had to complicate things up. Standing outside with a hose to water these guys every day isn't nearly as fun as setting up an automatic watering system. One misting hose, an automatic timer, and a bunch of nails later and I can completely soak the entire yard, plus half of our neighbors yard, and barely have to spend any time outside at all.
So the garden is coming along well so far. I'm looking forward to late summer when we can start enjoying our peppers. In the meantime, I'll have to figure out a way to harvest them remotely as well. Something involving pulleys and fiber optics. And bat guano.