Last Easter, 2017, on a whim, I decided to plant squash seed in my front flower bed. Our large dog and winter had mananged to kill yet another set of small hedge bushes. I wasn't going to sink another hundred dollars, that's on the cheap side, to re purchase, plant, and mulch the flower beds. Thinking I wasn't aiming for yard of the month, I'd attempt to grow food as an experiment. A few weeks later, we had squash plants. As soon as I saw the first seedlings burst from the Earth, I dug in deeper. literally. I'd purchased my husband a sack of purple seed potatoes around his late Winter birthday. The intent was to sprout them at home, then ask my mother inlaw, a master gardener, to please grow them again in her ample garden. She'd done it before with minimum success. I decided we'd grow them here on the Funny Farm... but where? A google search taught me I could grow most foods in containers. I looked around the yard and attic. Noticed there were lots of empty plastic totes. I then proceeded to purchase a few bags of potting soil, and took my 9 mm hand gun, and shot holes in the container. Next thing we know, there's potato sprouts. Last year I turned my Daddy's old trot line tubs that I'd mounted on each end of my flower beds, and planted flowers in the year prior, into herb gardens. I took and old kiddie pool, we'd had for ducks, that had also grown beautiful flowers, and planted some cucumber seed. I took a few more storage totes and planted a few tomato vines. I googled as I went. I learned last year, after years of killing simple house plants inside, I had a knack for growing food in containers outside. No one was more tickled by the fruits of not much labor than I was.
It was a long cold winter here in West Tennessee. It gave me plenty of time to survey our very hilly yard, and plot and plan. I decided I was going to grow on a bigger scale this year. I wanted to actually till up some yard in addition to my growing container garden venture. Last year was simply a test to see if I could grow anything. This year, we borrowed a tiller, sold off the camper, bought seed and plants and got to digging in the Dixie dirt.
This year, on the Funny Farm, there is about a two hundred square foot patch in the Earth. There's tomatoes, cucumber, peppers,beans, and one twenty cent corn seed packet planted. There is about a one hundred square foot potato patch thriving. I've got cabbage planted in the former flower, cucumber pools. There is squash in one flower bed and melon planted in the other. A social media request gleaned me two old kiddie pools that I planted peas in. Plus, ten containers with tomato, peppers, and potatoes planted. It's a true hodgepodge of growing vessels around here. It's not exactly yard of the month worthy, for sure. To be totally honest, because we do live out here in the Boonies of West Tennessee, the grow containers don't bother me at all. We did invest in some new landscape timbers from Home Depot to outline the potato and larger Earth garden. We tilled in 10-10-10 fertilizer to everything. Purchased a few grow mix dirt scoops from the local nursery. I've planted countless seed packets of wild flowers, marigolds, and zinnias. Zinnias are my personal favorite. You always need to plant flowers near your food, to encourage bees. Bees are the true garden helpers, by way of pollination.
We had a few non starts, due to above mentioned long winter. After planting squash seed, cabbage, and potatoes, we not only had three more frost, we also had an unholy hail storm in the wee hours one morning. I planted cabbage and squash seed again. The potatoes seem non the worse for wear despite the varying temperatures around them. So far most everything planted from seed and purchased plants are thriving. I've done two plantings of beans and cucumber. Plan on one more seed sewing, to hopefully get a continual crop.
The plan is to home can and freeze whatever surplus fruits of our labor we yield. The weather has still been a fighting factor. We seemed to have gone straight from Winter, to pollen, straight to summer. Record high temps are being currently set in my corner of Dixieland. Stay tuned to see what happens, and if I can cook a full meal of home grown vegetables for my growing boys.
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