Chapter 36. How Does Your Garden Grow?

This last time I made bread, I actually ground the sprouted wheat in my grandma's old hand-crank meat grinder.

Interesting experience; the bread has a TOTALLY different texture, too. Nice. I soured it on the counter overnight before adding the yeast/etc and then I baked it in the bread baker machine...didn't want to heat up the whole house using the oven, considering it was 108 degrees over the weekend. Man. And the machine did a GREAT job. I just had to keep peeking in as it was mixing to make sure that I had added enough flour to make a good dough.

My garden is coming along...Sadly, my camera isn't faring so well. Been dropped a few times too many. I need to have a wrist strap because I drop everything these days. My shoulders and hands are just a mess. I'm doing a bunch of physical therapy stretches to see if I can get them up and running again without surgery. Had to give up dog training; I just can't take the jerking around on the leash any more.

So here is the veggie garden, as of a couple days ago. It's hard to remember that the pots are anywhere from 1 to 1.5 feet wide, so really they ought to be adequate for the plants, as long as I remember to water them a LOT when they are bigger. I have never seen all that much root system on the plants I have torn out at the end of the season. It sure seems like these ought to be big enough. I know there's an issue with root temperature; I'm hoping the pots will be adequately shaded by the zucchini and watermelon leaves.

So here it is so far.

I will pave in the entire dirt area with granite scrap, leaving just a small square of lawn in the center, like maybe a six foot square. Just enough for dogs to pee on. That way I can replace it frequently with a few strips of sod when they kill it off. LOL.

I haven't figured out what I'm doing with the bed on the far end...it's just weeds right now. I am seriously considering trying to grow some heirloom wheat in it!

The green beans are doing really well. I started them FOUR TIMES this year. The first time they grew and then died; the second and third times the seeds just rotted; and the last time I planted the remainder of the seed packet, 51 seeds, and 16 came up. OK then. I have given them old branches to climb on and hopefully that will get them mostly up and out of the way of the dogs lurking on the other side of the pickets. I am planning to fill in between the pavers with either decomposed granite or pea gravel. Haven't actually figured that out yet.

Here are the basil (with the cuke in back), the eggplant, the watermelon, this dumb vine I'm going to dispose of, and the zucchini. I cut back the basil to make some pesto and here is the cuke:

I am hoping that it too can survive the dogs lurking inside the kennel...well ,I might have to put some additional wire on the inside just to help them survive. We shall see.

My compost was a huge success this year; I used it in all of the veggie pots. I actually decided to empty it out and begin a new batch in the compost bin. I layered it in dirt, green stuff, old dried up scrap, chicken manure, and started over again. Garden lasagna. Now I need to find some worms for it!