The Constant Gardener

Last May, I posted Gardening for Dummies wondering if I should get one of the Dummy book series to start my planter garden. Instead of the book, I asked for suggestions and tips from friends, colleagues, and gardeners, and paid close attention to all gardening related TV shows, radio segments, and internet articles. Since last summer, I have not only successfully grown tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, and various herbs, I have also had delicious planter box vegetables and countless servings of organic pesto dishes! This year, in addition to the planter boxes, I got really fancy and expanded our gardening space! As part of our backyard landscaping project, we ripped out most of the shrubs and gained a lot of real estate for gardening. Before executing phase II of our landscaping plan in September, we have one growing season so we went absolutely wild! After reaping the fruits of my labor from last year, Jim decided that he's going to plant 9 tomato plants and 15 various peppers. With the gardening confidence that I gained from last year's crops, I bought 24 heads of various lettuce varietals, cantaloupes, honeydews, parsley, oreganos, thyme, and of course, sweet basils. The most fancy gardening thing that I incorporated this year was to release ladybirds (ladybugs) to fight off aphids!

I couldn't wait until the sunset last night to release 1,500 ladybirds that came in a cheap plastic container... When I turned the container up side down in the tomato planter, they crawled on to the plants, making themselves at home. 7am this morning, I rushed out of bed to check on the headcount, they were busy buzzing around the plants getting a morning tan. I watched them in fascination with just a slight tampering. I gardened for the most part of the morning and a few hours after sunset. Jim and I are both exhausted after two days of digging, planting, watering, and more digging. Tomorrow will be another gardening day but the hard work will be all worth it when that delicious balsamic vinaigrette salad comes from the backyard.


It's time to let the ladybirds work their magic and for us to head to bed. Tomorrow will be another gardening day and we will be one day closer to having those fruits and vegetables in our plates!