A record of Edible Garden: Update

We are back with an edible garden update simply a few short months since we planted it back in mid May. And the good news is that our little herb, fruit, and vegetable experiment was in fact a success! Not only did everything live, but it thrived with quite little labor on our part. Score! We were lucky to have a lot of rain fall in the late spring and early summer to establish everything, and whenever we had spans of hot dry weather we simply used the rain that we saved up in our Hands-on rain barrel to keep things glad & green. That is it!

We did not see the need to reach for any pesticides or even any fertilizer thanks to the nutrients from our backyard compost that nurtured everything since we used it to plant things back in May. So in the is-it-more-work-than-it is-worth category, the answer is unequivocally NO! There is truly nothing like a fresh tomato or raspberry snagged in your quite own yard. And our dinners are a lot tastier thanks to the homegrown herbs we now have on hand. Check out how tall our stalks of basil got (front right below). They are practically up to my knee!

We also have more oregano, parsley, and swiss chard than we can even eat. And speaking of chard, we are ashamed to admit that we have not even tried it yet! We have watched it grow bigger and leafier but do not truly know of any good chard recipes off the top of our heads. Do you folks have any suggestions for us? It is a crime not to have tried our homegrown chard yet!

But lets move on to something we have eaten since the moment they appeared: our habit forming cherry tomatoes. We have been tossing them back like candy for the past month or so and we enjoy that as soon as we pluck a few off our little plant buddy is already hard at work making new ones. It is like a never-ending supply of sugary-sweet snacks. Here is what they look like in the growing stage… not quite ready for eating.

And here is where they end up right before we pop them into our watering mouths (which happened to this guy as soon as I snapped a few shots):

We in fact purchased two distinct types of cherry tomatoes, so here is the “golden” variety when it is ripe. They get all vibrant and orange when they are ready. Fairly, eh? And they look so strong mixed with the deeper red ones that we also have growing nearby.

We enjoy whipping up a especially swift salad with some of our garden basil:

Simply toss in a bit of feta and some italian dressing and it is chow time…

But we cannot forget about our remarkable raspberry bush that has us majorly whipped (we literally wait with bated breath for each burst of berries). There is not much in this world that compares to fresh garden grown raspberries.

So in summary, we highly highly recommend starting a little edible garden of your own. As long as you keep things watered while they settle in you should have a relatively straightforward go at it, and you can even grow oregano, basil and parsley in a pot on your windowsill or balcony. Straightforward peasy. Heck, speaking of peas, you can likely grow them too!

We are also glad to report that we certainly got our money’s worth in the budget department. Our raspberry bush was simply $9 at Lowe’s in the beginning of the season and we snagged all of our tomato plants and herbs for simply $10 total at the farmer’s market! We have easily enjoyed at least $20 worth of basil alone not to mention all the other goodies we have eaten on a regular basis for the past few months thanks to our backyard before-dinner pit stop. Sweet.

But what about you folks? Have you been growing anything of your own this year? Do you have any pest problems or pointers and tricks to share with fellow beginner gardeners like us? And what about those swiss chard recipe suggestions? Certainly spill those beans.