At the start of this year I decided to try my hand at gardening. There were a few reasons for this decision. For one, there are two garden beds beside our house which remained untamed over the first couple years we lived here. I did little to maintain it, so for the summer seasons of 2018 and 2019 they were both overgrown with weeds of all kinds. It was almost like one of those vacant lots you see while driving, or the "Prairie Restorations/Preserves". So last winter I decided to clear out both beds and make use of them, as they were intended. My other reason was I had an urge to grow and make my own things. I had this fleeting thought years ago of raising an herb garden. My thought was to plant herbs which I would later use in herbal teas, so lavender, mint, lemon grass, chamomile, etc. This never came to fruition. Another reason was, I felt like I needed a hobby, but one that's productive. What's more productive than having a garden? It also seemed fairly simple. I could learn a new language, yes, but I could also just dig around in dirt, place seeds or plants into the ground, and watch'em go. I also watched my dad grow peppers and herbs years ago to use in cooking and to make his own salsa, which I guess also falls under the "grow and make my own things" reasoning. Lastly, of the plants I wanted to grow, I wanted to grow tomatoes. I felt like they were easy enough to handle, but I have a memory of my Uncle Rex going on about how tomatoes grown in Missouri soil were the best he ever tasted. Personally, I have never really cared too much for tomatoes, but wanted to make my mild skepticism into belief.
First thing I did, back in February, was I borrowed some books from the library. They were helpful to get an idea of what I would need, provided the difficulty of each kind of plant, and helped me craft a rough plan for the project. My plan was simple as far as "what to grow". I was going to grow herbs like cilantro, basil, thyme, dill and oregano in one bed; my other bed would have tomatoes and peppers. With that in mind, I was ready to clear things out and till the earth. I bought simple tools at first such as a shovel and a spade. I went to work clearing out the beds. One had this deep rooted tree-like weed which took a majority of my time and effort. A gnarly thing that I had to dig in deep to uproot. With some hacking and snipping I was able to get it with a hand saw and hand trimmers. Once the beds were cleared, it was time to get the garden in shape, but since it wasn't spring yet and we still had a while before the anticipated last frost of the season, I decided to wait.
And wait I did. Time went on. COVID came and made it's home. I was furloughed from my job during this time in April. I spent time looking at some YouTube videos so I could plan my work (Gary Pilarchik - The Rusted Garden was probably the most helpful with his video on starting your beginner garden, in case you decide to do the same). I made a list of supplies and headed over to Home Depot. I bought a couple bags of garden soil and fertilizer. I bought some seeds for my herbs, but planned to get transplants for tomatoes and peppers. None to be found, so I headed over to a nursery I knew of near our house. Near as I could tell, not a lot of what I was looking for, unless I was looking for more landscaping items. I went to another nursery, also very near our house, and they had a wonderful selection of plants. I bought two grape tomato plants, one regular run-of-the-mill tomato plant, green pepper, jalapeno pepper, chili pepper, cayenne pepper and a lavender plant (for the herb garden). I bought a few stakes and then took everything back to the house to get started.
I remember it was a great day - sunny, blue skies, warm. I started breaking up the dirt in the beds with the shovel then poured a bag of garden soil in each and mixed it in. For the seeds, I put them just under the soil and mixed around some fertilizer. For the plants, I dug a small hole, mixed in fertilizer and set the little guys in. I set up the stakes next to them some support as they grew. Gave them all a good shower of water and...well, let them go.
When I did all of that it was around April 18th or so. It was slow going for a long time. Every morning, during the time my daughter took her nap, I would go out through our walk-out in our basement and go to the side of the house to take a look. This morning visit would occur nearly every day until roughly a month ago. Honestly, the pepper plants looked worse for wear at first. The poor cayenne pepper plant I planted at the very end of the bed looked ragged for a while. He would get the first and last bit of sun every day, but it didn't look like it helped much for a long time. I also snipped the tops of the pepper plants when they were still small, a tip I learned online to help pepper plants grow bushier and with more peppers (which worked over time). Time went on. April became May which soon brought us all to June. My plants were getting bigger (the grape tomato plants shooting up like a weed). The plants were finally starting to flower. Then, one morning in early June, I stepped outside to do my morning check and found something which made me involuntarily and audibly gasp: a single, tiny, green tomato. Yellow flowers had been budding and blooming for a couple weeks, but this, THIS was a sign that I was doing things right. It still took a while for that little tomato to grow and ripen, but seeing it for the first time was exciting. From then on, the plants went crazy, both in growth and production. My first venture in gardening was turning into a success.
The summer went on. I had loads of grape tomatoes. I had numerous regular tomatoes. And the amount of cayenne peppers my little cayenne plant was producing! Everybody was doing pretty well...except my herbs on the other side of the AC unit. The cilantro slowly but surely sprang up. The lavender I planted from a transplant was doing well. As for the dill, oregano, basil and thyme seeds I planted...no shows. Nothing at all. To make up for it, a cherry tomato plant sprouted right out of the ground beside the lavender. Over time it became overwhelming, growing faster than the other tomato plants which I purposely planted. It too produced loads of cherry tomatoes.
Over the summer I harvested and used a lot. The fresh cilantro was used for a pork chop marinade and a batch of salsa I made. The lavender buds I used for hot tea. The grape and cherry tomatoes were used mostly as a snack (and mostly for my daughter, who luckily enjoyed them a lot). I gave many plastic bags fit to burst to family and friends. The regular tomatoes were used for burgers, BLTs, salsa and, well, just plain eating. The jalapenos I threw into salsa and some omelets. The chili pepper plant...was interesting. It grew large and bushy, but its problem was the flowers. For most of the season, the white flowers would die and fall off. Only a couple produced chili peppers. It wasn't until I trimmed it down considerably that it came back and produced numerous peppers, but by then the season was nearing the end (which was about September/October). The cayenne, however, became a wild bush filled with peppers. They would ripen to a bright red and I would harvest them a few at a time (only a handful seemed to ripen on the vine at once). With those, I tried my hand at producing hot sauce. It was a bit of trial and error at first, and I required the collective knowledge of YouTube yet again. After a couple tries I got it down. I probably made 5 or so batches of hot sauce over the last 4 or 5 months. It was used for hot wings a couple times, but mostly to put on eggs an mexican food. My last batch of peppers I harvested before the plant died I actually smoked on my grill, along with several chili peppers. That sauce has probably been the best.
Overall, the attempt at gardening was a success. Sure, a few herbs didn't grow, but I wasn't broken up about it. I still got a lot of produce from my plants, and nothing beats the feeling of picking something fresh and bringing it into your kitchen. Some of my favorite memories though, are going out each morning and examining the plants. There were mornings I spent twenty to thirty minutes pruning and taking care of the plants which brought a sort of Zen peace I guess. Through everything that's going on, I needed that. I needed that quiet, that focus on nature. Then there were the mornings after it had rained. The crickets chirped and the air felt cool. I would grasp a grape tomato covered in rain water and pluck it off the vine. I put it in my mouth and it seemed sweeter and juicier than any store bought grape tomato I had eaten.
Another memory I enjoyed was sharing the garden with my wife and daughter. With my daughter, we would go out in the backyard and play. She would trot over to the side and look at the plants, wanting to tug and pull at them. She always managed to pull off unripe grape and cherry tomatoes. I tried to teach her only take the red ones. I would pull off some that she couldn't reach and hand to her. She would munch on as many as she could get, or at least as many as I would allow. Her mouth and the top of her shirt covered in tomato juice.
The garden is of course gone for this year. A night that dipped below freezing earlier in the month killed off pretty much everything. The lavender is hanging in there though. I anticipate building raised beds and possibly making it a little larger next year. Would love to grow cayenne peppers again and make hot sauce. I'm a little bummed the sauce I have now is the last batch. Just need to make it last.
And to answer your thought - Yes, this skeptic, who once didn't even care for tomatoes, now believes that Missouri soil can produce some of the juiciest and sweetest tomatoes.
For those interested, I did post some garden photos earlier in the summer on my Instagram @AllTheMadOnes. I have others which I still have on my phone and I may post later as a sort of recap.
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