Confessions of an errant vegetable gardener

November 9, 2008

I had plans. Big plans. I had diagrams, spreadsheets and labeled photos. Sigh....

Some things just aren't meant to be. Like me harvesting broccoli from my raised bed in November. I took this photo the end of October. There will be no fresh homegrown broccoli for Thanksgiving.

I love the idea of homesteading. Growing your own, making your own, clearing land to plant stuff. Even if it's just a patch of dirt in your backyard. I am not an honest-to-goodness homesteader, nor am I trying to be. But I do have a home on a small city lot. And we're in the long, slow process of transforming this little house and piece of land into an urban oasis of sustainable family living. Of course that includes gardening.

I have grand delusions ideas of growing our own food. After all if this family in California can do it than of course so can our family living in Maine. Ha!

I suppose if I really "set my mind to it" we could grow more than tomatoes, a bucketful of carrots and a jar of beans from our backyard. But as I discovered this past season, growing food takes a lot of time and space. You can manage with less space if you have more time because you can rotate crops and such. However, I seem to be short on both during this season of my life. I'm finding contentment with a conclusion I made the end of this summer. I'd rather buy from local farmers than grow my own, at least for this period of my life.

Flower gardening, now that is something I could never give up. Flowers yield such beauty, not to mention fragrance and attract lovely butterflies and bees. As I learned this summer, vegetables seem to only attract pests, and I have no patience (finding organic solutions that work takes time and effort) for dealing with them.

Autumn Sedum</span>

I need to dig in dirt at least a couple hours each week. But that's all I've got to give right now and it's simply not enough for flowers and food. So I'll choose flowers.

Of course I still plan to plant tomatoes because late summer isn't worth living without homegrown tomatoes. But next year I'm scaling back my expectations. Tomatoes, a few peas, maybe some carrots, some basil, spring spinach and lettuce in the raised bed.

Oh yikes, this is going to be harder than I thought.

Late October Sunflower Corn Bed</span>