Let Me "Hep" You, Pwease!

This is Ella.

This is Josiah.

These are two of my brother’s three children. The oldest, Kayleigh, wasn’t able to join us, but these two, especially Ella, makes up for that! Ella LOVES to help. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, she wants a piece of the action. I love this little girl’s zest for life. She’s expressive, stubborn, and down right hilarious. And she was thrilled about helping Grandma and Grandpa with their garden!

Josiah, on the other hand, is much more reserved. He has some pretty severe skin allergies that don’t allow him to dig in the dirt. So, he had a great time playing with Grandma on the swing set in the backyard.

While Mom waited for the kids to show up, Dad and I ran to Lowes to see what other vegetable experiments we could try. We definitely decided that we needed some marigolds. Planting these flowers around your garden, tomato plants especially, helps keep the bugs away. They don’t like the smell. Frankly, I don’t either. So we purchased about six plants to keep around the garden.

We also decided to try our hand at lettuce. Lettuce is typically a colder weather plant and we are taking a risk planting it. There weren’t any seedlings available, so we went with straight seeds and some oblong planters to plant them in. This should be Ella-proof, right?

After we got home, we took everything to the backyard to get Ella all set up.

First things first, the marigolds were placed on the bed. Ella did this with great care!
















I wish I had pictures of her planting the seeds with Grandpa. I’m not sure how I missed that one. Maybe it’s because I was trying to keep her from spilling the seeds everywhere. I didn’t do a very good job of that. She was so excited that all the seeds kind of got dumped into little piles, instead of planted in a nice long row. If this lettuce makes it, it will be a total miracle! She was so proud of herself that you just couldn’t get mad.

After everything was planted and in its place, it was time to give it a good watering. Josiah decided he was the man for the job! He sweetly followed Grandpa around, holding on to the hose, to make sure that all the plants got their share of the water. Some plants got a little more than others.

 

With Ella's help, my Dad made a gate out of some old fence he had in the garage to keep out any skunks or raccoons.








So, planting day had come to a close and our gardening adventure had truly begun. Our dreams of delicious vegetables were securely planted in the ground, watered, and protected with a makeshift gate and some plastic mesh. Now we wait.

Planting Day!

Well, the day finally came...time to plant all of our lovely little seedlings! The weather could not have been more perfect. It was overcast and cool, and the ground was nice and soft after the rain from the day before. My dad had lined the garden bed with compost a few days before we began planting to give the ground a chance to rest. Everything was ready to go!



Before I arrived, Mom and Dad had already planted the strawberries and herbs in large, galvanized tubs. Perfect receptacles for plants that don’t need much room!

Then, it was tomato time. Oh, my favorite! Tomatoes are great plants for pots, instead of planting them directly in the ground. The plants generally grow up and not out too much, so a cage or trellis is necessary.

Have you ever seen the upside down tomato planters? My niece Ella thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, so of course we had to get one for her! This is planted with a great beefsteak tomato called “Celebrity.” This variety is a very dependable producer and the tomatoes are delish!

Now to start on the garden bed!

First things first…

We set all of the plants in their pots on top of the garden bed to be sure we gave each plant enough room to grow. Grouping similar plants together helps maximize your space.

These lovely plants are bell peppers. Now, why my dad bought so many pepper plants, I’ll never know! Sometimes you can’t leave him alone with a basket in a store. These are not large plants so they don’t need a large amount of space between plants.





At this point, I began to feel like a REAL gardener. First of all, I was totally filthy. I had mud on my jeans, my gardening gloves were black with dirt, and my gardening clogs (yes, I said clogs) were covered in mud. It. Was. Awesome. I had been digging in the beautiful soil, planting these young seedlings in hopes that they would one day produce something delicious. I had even dug up some worms and didn’t gag. Total accomplishment! And to top it all off, it had started to rain. It was like my own little made-for-TV movie moment.

With this phase of the garden done, we got word that my niece and nephew were coming to “help.” Ella is four and Josiah is eighteen months. Are you getting the picture? So off to Lowes once more to find some kid-friendly plants for them to help with.

Phase two was underway…

What to grow, what to grow...

Deciding what vegetables to plant was a fairly easy process; determining what grows when was a little more of a challenge!

Most of the websites I perused said to be sure to wait until the last frost appears. Obviously, frost kills plants. Also, there are certain vegetables that are to be planted in early spring, when others should be saved for warmer weather. Well, Southern California weather has been pretty unpredictable this year. We’ve had much more rain than normal and the temperature seems to be a little schizophrenic. For example, this week started off cool (low to mid 60s) and cloudy, but by Thursday it’s supposed to be 87 degrees. So do you plant cool weather veggies or warm weather veggies?

How about…both?!

After talking with my parents, we determined to plant everything at once since there was no chance of any more frost. This is also advantageous because it allows us to plant more vegetables later in the summer if we so chose. I’m seriously dreaming of months and months of tomatoes!

So I met up with them for lunch to plan our attack. Tomatoes, green beans, summer squash, bell peppers, and herbs topped our list. These were things my dad had grown in the past, so we knew they were tried and true producers.

But I also wanted to get a little adventurous! This is quite unlike me, so there must have been some extra awesomeness in my Starbucks that morning.

Several years ago, my mother-in-law sent me a recipe for homemade pickles and I’ve made them for a few years. So delish! So, I decided to plant some pickling cucumbers. I’m trying ‘Boston Pickling’ and ‘Armenian’ cucumbers. I’m really interested to see which one makes better pickles. Or, you know, which plant I don’t kill.

I’m also trying my hand at broccoli. This one is really a shot in the dark! The broccoli plants were only $1.99 so I won’t feel too terrible if they fail. The only variety I found was ‘Calabrese.’ It seems to be a fairly dependable variety, but only time will tell.

To round off the new plant adventure, my parents decided to plant watermelon, strawberries, and pumpkins for my nieces and nephews. I think I’m the most excited about their watermelons! There’s nothing like crisp, cold watermelon in the warm summer months.

So list in hand, we headed to Lowe’s in the rain to make our purchases. We ended up with six different tomato varieties, two different cucumbers, five bell pepper, one broccoli, two strawberry, one watermelon, one pumpkin, four green bean, and three squash. As long as the rain held off the next day we were going to plant everything.

All together now… “Rain, rain go away!”

Anybody got a yard I can borrow?

I don’t have a yard. I do have two nice patios, but they also have an overhang so they don’t get much sun.

I have tried to grow things on my patios before. Just after we got married, my sweet mother-in-law sent me a dwarf lemon tree. Oh, how I love lemons! I was so excited to put it out back and reap some deliciousness. Yeah, that didn’t happen. I thought maybe the front patio would be better for growing vegetation. I bought a tomato plant (my true summer love), and tried my hardest to not kill it. The few that did grow were attacked by pests. Not enough sun and too much water, I was told. I tried flowers, too. That didn’t happen either.

My husband, Nathan, and I dream of having a house with a yard. Well, I probably dream about it a little more than he does. (I blame it on HGTV!) We’ve talked many times about how having a yard to grow some vegetables and fruit trees would be amazing, but living in Southern California means a house is not in our near future.

So what’s an apartment-dwelling girl to do when she dreams of delicious summer veggies? Mooch off Mom and Dad!

I am so blessed to have my parents a mere ten minutes away. Plus their neighbors let me take lemons off their tree. Pure heaven! My dad has done vegetable gardens before, but it never occurred to me to use their yard for my benefit. A few weeks ago, my dad mentioned he was thinking about another garden this summer and asked if there was anything in particular Nathan and I wanted. Have you ever seen “Despicable Me”? Liiightbulb! Why not carve out a place for myself in my parent’s garden? Dang, I’m a genius sometimes! My parents graciously agreed to let me have some space in their garden and I immediately went into full planning mode.

If you know me, I’m a girl who LOVES a plan. I almost always have a plan…sometimes I even have plans for my plan. I also have a deep obsession with doing everything right the first time, and oh, how the thought of failing keeps me up at times! I’m a perfectionistic planner.  Not a winning combination if you’re looking for a good time on a Saturday night, but helpful if you’d like to know what to do two weeks from now. I digress…

I went home and hopped on the internet because I was going to learn everything I could about gardening in one day! Yes, I’m a little loony, too. My first stop was to Sunset.com. Was that ever an eye opener! There are agricultural zones and then zones within zones. There are a plethora of different kinds of soils and seeds. Some seeds needed to be started indoors and then transferred; others could be purchased as seedlings and immediately transferred into the ground. Certain plants needed certain soils. Some had to be fed more than others. Some vegetables won’t even grow in SoCal and if you try to grow them YOU WILL DIE FROM FRUSTRATION!

At this point I started to reach for my prescription of Xanex.

What on earth was I getting myself into? I decided I needed some more information, so I headed to Barnes & Noble to look at some gardening magazines. I was amazed at how many publications are devoted to gardening! They had some for living-in-the-country gardening and rooftop gardening, gardening in random vessels from a junk yard. Somehow this made me feel better and like I wasn’t a total idiot for thinking I could do this.

I picked up a magazine that had an article about mistakes first-time gardeners make. Sold! If I’m going to do this, you’d better believe I’m not making any mistakes.

So I took my shiny magazine and sat outside in the beautiful, spring weather. As I flipped through the pages, my mouth began to water at the pictures of sweet tomatoes, crisp lettuce, and juicy corn. Oh yeah…my summer garden is going to be awesome!

Make Our Garden Grow

“My Candide Garden” is an odd title for a gardening blog. The novella, written by Voltaire, has nothing to do with gardening and, in all honesty, I don’t know much about Voltaire. My introduction to Candide came my junior year in high school and through the music of Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein used Voltaire’s novella to write a comical operetta. It was first performed on Broadways in 1956 and was a complete disaster. Revivals of the show did a little better, but initially…total failure.

So what does this have to do with me and a garden?

The final song in Bernstein’s operetta is a song called “Make Our Garden Grow.” It starts with a soprano/tenor duet sung by the main character, Candide, and Cunegonde, the girl he ends up marrying. It’s a really beautiful song with sweet lyrics. This show may have been a flop, but Bernstein is a gifted composer.

My junior year in high school, the top honor choir that I sang in did “Make Our Garden Grow” in our winter concert and I was singing the part of Cunegonde. MY. FIRST. BIG. SOLO. I was dying a little on the inside. At one point there is an octave jump…an A to a high A. There are eight notes in an octave. If you sing them one at a time, it’s not a big deal, but if you sing the first note and the last note in succession, you’ve got a challenge on your hands. I had never done anything like this. How was I going to sing a high A? In front of people? With a microphone in front of my face? And the guy I had a stupid high school crush on was singing the tenor solo. Like I said, I was dying a little on the inside.

So I practiced…a lot. The wife of my high school youth pastor was a trained soprano and she graciously helped me figure out how to make that octave jump not sound hideous. “Think of the first note as a springboard for your high note.” That little piece of advice has stayed with me for over twenty years. Even as I went on and studied music in college, I can still remember Sandy’s words.

All of the practicing paid off because I was able to perform my solo well, without any embarrassing moments. To this day, when I hear that song, I fondly remember my first big solo—my nervousness in the unknown, the sense of accomplishment when I finished, using the easy note as a springboard for the hard one.

So it is with those memories and lessons that I have decided to grow a summer garden and try my hand blogging. I have no idea how I’m going to make some plants grow; this is totally new to me. The thought of trying to nurture something to life is a little terrifying…much like trying to figure out how to sing an octave jump. So I hope you’ll join me on my gardening adventure. It’s quite possible I’ll end up like Bernstein and have a total flop on my hands. It might take me several revivals to get it right. But I’m using this unknown as a springboard, even though I’m not sure where my high note is.

Oh, did I tell you I live in an apartment and don’t have a yard?

CANDIDE
You've been a fool and so have I, but come and be my wife.
And let us try, before we die, to make some sense of life.
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood and make our garden grow...
And make our garden grow.

CUNEGONDE
I thought the world was sugar cake, for so our master said.
But, now I'll teach my hands to bake our loaf of daily bread.

CANDIDE AND CUNEGONDE
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood and make our garden grow...
And make our garden grow.

ENSEMBLE
Let dreamers dream what worlds they please; those Edens can't be found.
The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees are grown in solid ground.

ENSEMBLE (a cappella)
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood and make our garden grow…
And make our garden grow!