Greg and I are doing pretty good on our resolution to spend more time at the garden this year. Well, except for this week because of the rain and the baptism/party/family in town this weekend. There’s a lot of getting ready that needs to happen at casa Carrico. Like recaulking the bathtub, and mopping, and baking cakes, and yard work, and all that.
Last week, we tilled up a couple of rows and planted some zucchini, straight neck squash and eggplant starts. I had great intentions of starting them from seed, but life happened and I decided to spend time playing with our kid and forgot all about starting seeds. Maybe next year or next growing season. We also got 18 sweet potato slips in the ground and planted four hills of pickling cucumbers. For the past two years, I’ve been able to rely on the garden to produce all the cucs I needed for our small family’s large dill pickle consumption rate. Hopefully this year will be more of the same. As long as the weather cooperates, I’m planning on heading out there with the baby tomorrow morning. He seems pretty content to sit on an unplanted row and watch me hoe, which I’m going to capitalize on while it lasts. Soon enough we’ll be taking the play pen out there so that he can squirm while we work.
On that note, we are experimenting with how much of our food we can reliably grow at the garden. More to the point, now that the kid is about to start a greater variety of solid food (as opposed to strictly rice cereal and milk), we want to see how much of the food we cook for him that we can grow ourselves. Mostly for cost, but also because it would be nice to know exactly where the food that we are feeding him comes from. I never expect that we’ll be able to feed ourselves all year, or even all summer, from the vegetables we grow. For one thing, the variety would be awfully limited. For another, I’m not willing to spend hours every day cultivating our crop. I also want to like gardening like I do now and not have it turn into a major chore.
In other gardening news, the three of us [my mom–who keeps track of our garden progress at her blog–Greg, and me] decided where we are planting what on the different plots. My mom got the corn [peaches & cream] and a few rows of lady peas [a cowpea variety that is a long-standing family favorite] in last week. The goal is to get the purple hull peas [another cowpea variety] and blackeyed peas planted in the second plot early next week now that the ground has warmed up.
Caroline Mitchell Carrico 