Micro-Garden

This summer I planted a "micro-garden." We have not been able to fence our garden and do our chicken rotation like we plan to, and I refused to engage in the battle against weeds and renegade chickens another year. However, I was also unwilling to go completely without some of our favorite fresh produce. Instead, I turned the flower bed around our back patio into my garden. I think that in a normal summer this would have been a doomed plan, but this year it worked out perfectly. The patio is on the north side of the house. Strike one for a vegetable garden. There is a large, mature cedar tree immediately to the west of the garden. Strike two. This year, though, we experienced a drought like I've never endured. The extra shade seemed to help my plants survive. Also, there is no way we could have afforded to water a full sized garden, but I was able to mulch and keep my little garden alive quite well. I REALLY wish I had taken more pictures. On Wednesday I pulled up all the plants that are not cold hardy. I thought about taking pictures, but knew I'd taken some a couple months ago and didn't realize how much it had grown and thrived in the fall! The plants had really filled out and you could not see the ground at all by the time I had to rip them out. It was pretty sad to do, but I knew they would be a rotten mess if I didn't, because a hard freeze was on it's way. Sure enough, I awakened to a morning temperature of 27* today. This way I can freeze all those lovely peppers to enjoy in cooked dishes over the winter, and I plan to make pickled green tomatoes this afternoon. My final stripping of the plants yielded almost 9 gallons of tomatoes and peppers!

I planted this eggplant, which had been growing in my classroom since the previous August, in May. Unfortunately Wayne doesn't like them, and they don't agree with my stomach. They made a nice ornamental for us, though. The peppers along the top of the picture produced huge Greek type peppers that were lovely in salads and sauteed in scrambled eggs. You can barely see the ~7' long tomato vine that runs from the eggplant to the peppers. It had also grown in my classroom window all school year. I planted it's roots, laid the vine along the ground, and hollowed out little pockets of soil about every 18" placing the soil on top of the vine. It took root along all those places and it appeared to be several plants instead of one long one. It bore some really nice cherry tomatoes. All the plants mentioned above were from a Miracle Gro greenhouse kit I bought on clearance for my students to enjoy.

My friend, Diana, gave me starts of Egyptian walking onions. They seem to have gotten themselves established pretty well in my little micro-garden. You can see one peeking out from the lemon balm with it's head of "babies" over the concrete near the top of the picture. Under the lemon balm is some lettuce. I had several varieties of lettuce which I mixed together in a cup and sowed in hopes of having a living ground cover. The germination rate of the lettuces wasn't that great, though.The ones that did come up tasted like burnt rubber. I really wish I knew what variety it was so I don't buy it again! LOL!

At the NE corner of the patio I placed several potted plants. The largest pot contains rhubarb. Unfortunately, it didn't' make it. Diana gave it to me as well. She has tried for several years to grow it and it wouldn't thrive. She told me she was ripping it all out and I begged for some. I guess my skills were even worse. I planted zinnias and cock's comb in the black pots, which did grow, but looked rather scraggly. The yellow pot contains more lemon balm. The large terra cotta pot contains a miniature rose given to me by my friend Jenifer two years ago. It has the most precious yellow roses! Hens and chicks are flourishing in the center plastic terra cotta looking pot, and the small pot had a lone Egyptian walking onion that I was nursing along until Diana gave me the new starts.

Here is a view of the entire micro-garden and patio. The whiskey barrel contains more tomato plants. Now it's all bare except for the perennials and I am preparing to mulch it this afternoon.

P.S. The garden also included several varieties of large tomatoes for canning and eating fresh. bell peppers, and Anaheim chili peppers. I planted cilantro and basil, but they didn't do very well. I think they may have been choked out by the tomatoes. The micro-garden also includes abundant peppermint and spearmint. I would love to see it completely filled in with mint-family herbs and abuzz with honey bees in the future!