Setting Down Our First Roots (Lauren)

I warned Austin. I swear I did (at least seven times) to NOT trust me with any plants. Not one. Not ever. But he's stubborn and didn't heed my warning and we were off to the community garden within a week of the last frost (well, hailstorm actually).
Let's be honest here, the only plant I've kept alive is one that lives in water (my beloved Marimo moss ball. His name is Tribble). It is physically impossible for me to over-water it and the only way to underwater it is to not submerge it completely. So... yea. I've killed a total of two cacti, and two mint plants, and countless unfortunate flowering plants. Getting the picture yet? I'm honestly TERRIBLE with plants. Despite this, Austin insisted that we start our adventure by getting a 10' x 20' garden plot about a 5 minute drive from the house.

We started planning for the garden about a month in advance. Deciding what to grow, how to grow it, when to plant it, and where to get the seeds. We settled on vegetables, roots, and tubers that were easy to grow. We chose potatoes, bell peppers, royal burgundy beans (like green beans... but burgundy), leeks, soy beans (the edible kind), radishes, baby carrots, and garlic (one of my favorite spices ever).

The garden (Garlic on the close end, potatoes on the far end)

We didn't need to bother with fertilizing the soil before we got there, that is a service that the community garden provides. That was a nice plus. We also didn't need to do any tilling or much weeding either due to the fact that the garden was tilled about a week before we arrived. We just roughed up the dirt in rows and planted our seeds. Being the geniuses we are, we had no way to measure the distances between our plants or rows so we used the rough estimate of "Lauren's forearm is about a foot long, right?". I would put my elbow to the edge of one hole then we'd mark where my wrist hit for the next one. Not an exact science, but worked well enough for us.

I was most excited for the potatoes and garlic (because I love eating them both and because I had the most hope for those two things surviving their time with me). The potatoes we planted one to a hole (about a foot down), all of the other seeds planted according to their recommendations on the packages. The garlic was the hardest to figure out how to plant. we had about five heads (specifically for planting) and were unsure as to whether we should plant the entire head, a single clove or multiple clove but not quite a head. We planted two as whole heads, the majority as single cloves, and two as partial heads. The whole heads have grown many stalks, the partial heads have grown about 3 or 4 and the single cloves only sprouted one. I'm under the impression that single cloves were the right answer... whoops.

The original plan was for Austin and me to manage the garden together as the summer went on, but he received a paid internship opportunity that was taking him out of state (one that sadly did not pan out in the end). With him gone after we planted our seeds, I was the only one left to take care of the garden. I kept telling him it was going to be dead by the time he returned, he didn't believe me. Despite my doubts, by week two, we already had sprouts, almost everything was growing when I checked in. I may or may not have accidentally plucked a few leek sprouts when thinking they were grass... we still have one left! It's fine. The potatoes were the first to sprout (and are still flourishing) but the radishes were the first to be picked.

All in all, the garden is working well for us, the only plant to have no sprouts is the bell peppers, but we might try them indoors before the year is through. Before I write too much more and ruin the suspense of how our garden is turning out and will turn out, I'll leave you to ponder our future and your own.

Well, I better make like a potato plant and LEAF (HA!)

-Lauren