A Different View

 Gardening looks much different for me this year.

It's not simply the "every year looks different in the garden" kind of different.

This is gardening in a different place.

I've gone from hundreds of feet of raised beds, established strawberry and asparagus beds, fruit trees and berry bushes, as well as established native wild flowers and other perennials, to a 60-foot long, 5-foot wide in-ground garden bed and 20-some mineral tubs for my vegetable gardens. I also have a few smaller containers and flower pots for vegetables, flowers and herbs on the porch.

I can't grow quite the abundance that I used to, but we'll manage.

So this is what my gardening looks like this year. 

A portion of the in-ground garden mulched with hay provided by a neighbor. We tilled this strip on New Year's Eve, a perfect thing for starting the new year. Right now it contains seedlings of kale, collards, lettuce, peas and radishes.

It brings me great joy to go out in the morning and look at all of the little green things popping up.

As usual, critters besides me want a portion of the produce. Rabbits started nibbling my peas, so I wrapped row cover around the trellis to thwart them. Cutworms took out some lettuce that I had transplanted into the garden. And unexpected deep cold  threatened it all. But these things are to be expected. Any little plants I stick in the ground from now on will get cutworm collars made from the inner tube of toilet paper rolls. 

In spite of all the growth in the garden, I'm feeling impatient. I want to pull some radishes now! I have made my first harvest. A couple of days ago I thinned kale (no matter how hard I try I always scatter the seed too thickly) and kept most of the thinnings as infant kale for salads, etc. Some of them were cooked with several kinds of wild greens -- garlic mustard, dandelions, nettles and cleavers. Eat your weeds, kids!

The other part of my gardening adventure this year looks like this:

These tubs and buckets contained my summer and fall garden last year, such as it was. Our landlady did let me use part of her small garden for my winter radishes once she dug sweet potatoes and cleared a few other things. Maybe she'll let me do that this year, too... if we haven't bought a house and moved.

I have tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings I started from seed, but they don't seem to want to grow. I will repot all of them and see if that helps. Mystifying. Frustrating. Disappointing.

It hurts my heart to have them not thriving. Maybe I planted them in the wrong sign of the Moon. I haven't paid attention to that for some time because I do so much that I just plant when I have time -- at least that's how it used to be. I'll repot them all now, while the Moon is waxing. Maybe that will help?

If planting time rolls around and they're still tiny, I'll go and buy plants. I hope they have the varieties I want. I overplanted these summer plants. I only have room for six tomato plants in the garden, and I'm not sure I have enough room in the tubs for all the peppers and eggplants. Overplanting the way I do things.

Three tubs and one bucket contain five broccoli plants. It started as six, but a cutworm (which I could not find) took one out. Some tubs also contain an abundance of mini bok choy seedlings, and I have some tiny Chinese cabbage seedlings ready to plant in one of the tubs. For some reason I'm craving bok choy and Chinese cabbage. These will become stir fries and kimchi, as well as salad ingredients. A little lettuce is in a couple of tubs, and I planted radishes and carrots in two more.

I wouldn't have considered carrots in a container, but I read an article about vegetables that will grow in containers and it listed carrots as one. Nothing to lose. 

As usual, gardening is an adventure and experiment, as well as a learning experience. Only more so this year. I'm hoping for good results and a decent harvest. Nothing is guaranteed, though, especially with the changing climate. 

Hopefulness has to be an ingrained trait of those of us who garden. We're never guaranteed that our seeds will sprout, much less grow into healthy, productive plants. But we keep planting.

Keep on planting.