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Health & Fitness

Urban Garden Update: Weeks 2-4

As summer nears its comeback, catch up with the local gardener on her first harvest of the year.

Weeks 2 & 3

What a beautiful day today. My potato salad is waiting in the fridge and should be perfect by dinnertime. It’s our first BBQ of the year and it’s overdue.

Today is also the first harvest of my garden this year. OK, so it’s just a few leaves of lettuce for the burgers but it’s progress. Now I’m really looking forward to the arrival of the rest of the veggies.

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Other than the lettuce, there hasn’t been much going on. The zucchini and cucumber starts are almost ready for transplant. The carrots are planted in half of a large square basket. I’ll plant the other half with more carrot seeds in a few weeks to extend the harvest time. This is my first time growing carrots in a planter, but I’m assured that it will work fine. Fingers crossed.

I have finally gotten past my pity party for not getting a big in-ground garden this year by concentrating on the positives. No weeding for one. And my basket planters can be moved around to adjust for sunlight needs. We plan on traveling a lot this summer so another advantage to movable plants is the ability to put them together in shady spot with a drip hose providing constant moisture. I’ve lost too many plants by relying on someone to water consistently for me.

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Week 4

Still not much happening. The rainy, cool weather with occasional sun has caused my lettuce to take off and we can’t eat salads fast enough to keep up. I keep forgetting to send lettuce home with people who visit!

I’ve been easing my cucumber and zucchini starts outdoors slowly to get them accustomed to the harsh outdoors. The process is called “hardening off” the plants. It’s a simple progression of letting them sit outdoors, rain or shine, for longer and longer periods each day. It can be done in a few days, but I am taking a week to give them the best chance for survival.

The tomatoes are languishing. There hasn’t been much progress but they look healthy. Just growing slowly. They need a good dose of some warm (or even hot!) weather to really take off.

I keep reading things on the internet about what I should have done when I transplanted the tomatoes. I should have added compost to the potting soil. I should have buried the bottom 2/3 of the entire plant in the soil when transplanting as the part buried underground will turn into a strong root system. I should have watered them with hot water in the beginning to heat up the soil and encourage growth. And so on and so on. I am stressing out and wishing I could do it all over again since it seems like I did it all wrong!

What I really should do is stop reading all the thousands of opinions online about what I should have done with the tomatoes. I will only use the internet to research ideas for what I still need to do or to look for a solution to a problem I run into. No more Monday morning quarterbacking for me! I hope…

I find myself missing the act of weeding my garden. Boy, I never thought I would say that! A happy medium is needed – a garden that has weeds only when I feel like weeding. Simple.

I read several articles online about how it is extremely difficult to transplant cucumber starts and the seeds should be sown directly in the soil where they are going to reside. Uh-oh!  But it’s too late now. I am going to attempt to transplant my beautiful little starts and see what happens.

When I went to plant the zucchini and cucumber into baskets, I changed my mind and planted them into a large flower bed I had just cleared and didn’t have a plan for. It gets about the right amount of sun. Now I’ll have something to weed! And if we do move this summer, which is fairly unlikely at this point, the next residents will have some lovely vegetables to enjoy.

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