Garden After All

After all of our talk about not doing the garden, it turns out we may do a garden after all. Not in our own yard, mind you, but over in the community garden. The main impetus to go in this direction was the desire to grow tomatoes, because we use a lot of canned tomatoes in cooking, especially now that we’re aspiring vegetarians. Not only does get a little expensive buying canned tomatoes, at least the organic kind with no BPA, but we’re constantly running out. Your heart sinks when you go to the pantry and there aren’t any canned tomatoes.

Now we decided to forsake the garden this year, for a variety of reasons. We just don’t have the gardening gene, and truth be told, we don’t eat all of our bounty, anyway. Even tomatoes go to waste, though they don’t seem to grow that well in the first place. It begs the question, why? The soil may be deficient, though we add compost every year. R is good about creating raised beds, and at least in the beginning, she and the kids work very diligently at getting things going. After much rumination, R and I figured that the problem is that lack of sun. We are nestled in the woods, and though the garden gets some decent exposure, all those tall pines make it less than ideal.

Then the idea came up for doing a community garden plot. This was partly inspired by SG, my fellow trustee, who gave me a hard time for not doing a garden this year. She shamed me into submission, especially when she learned that A&N are doing their own tiny gardens in our yard (more on this later). Then I thought, what if we did a garden, and just grew tomatoes? I’d grow two kinds, beefsteak like for sandwiches, and canning tomatoes. Keep it simple. All of our other veggie needs we could satisfy at the Farmer’s Market, it’s the tomatoes that can be overwhelming.

Plus, I’ve been told that community garden gets scorching amounts of sun, so much so that it needs constant watering. Say no more. Plus, we’re there all the time, and it’s nice being around other people in the community. R said if we do it, we’ll need to stay on top of it because otherwise we’ll be shamed into submission, but I think it’ll be okay, especially if we can get a bunch of tomatoes to can. I rather like that idea. The kids seem into it, though like all things, they might lose steam after the initial sheen wears off, but that’s to be expected.

We’ll see where this one goes. Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to FAOemergencies for the pic.