How is your home garden growing?

June 13, 9:02 PMOrganic Food ExaminerNatalie Rotunda

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Tomato, cucumber and rosemary (right to left)

Hey, home gardeners, can we talk garden talk for a bit? How grows your garden this summer? How much time do you spend in it? How do you keep your weeds under control? Do you mulch? What did you plant, and have you harvested anything yet?

Our garden isn't anywhere near ready for harvest. That's okay, though...I can be patient. Meanwhile, it gets plenty of attention a couple days each week.

We dropped a modest bundle on organic bedding plants we bought from our local food co-op; the last purchase was yesterday. The co-op bring in a wide range of plants (flowers, too) from a local grower. Hold me back! I want to buy everything I see. Daughter Heather and I snagged only those, however, with this plan in mind: We'd choose the veggies we normally buy. For us, that's four types of bell peppers (green, red, yellow and chocolate-colored), a couple types of lettuce, green onions, cukes, tomatoes, broccoli, acorn and spaghetti squash. We didn't need bedding plants for potatoes and garlic; we planted the actual potatoes and garlic directly into the ground.

To hold the weed population to a minimum, we keep mulch around each plant. If weeds do show up, we’ll take care of them right away with a little happy hoe-hoe-hoeing. It won't be long. Good eats are just around the corner. Can’t wait, and I’ll bet you can’t either.

Herbs are another important part of our culinary needs around here (for some awfully good info and tips on growing herbs, check out the Minneapolis Kitchen Examiner). We planted these favorites, parsley, basil, thyme, rosemary, sage, and oregano. If there’s such a thing as a bumper crop, we’ll dry what we don't use this summer for use this winter.

I have to tell you I did a happy dance when I spotted these little darlings on the co-op’s outdoor plant racks: baby watermelon plants. I love watermelon. What I don’t love is how expensive they are, so we don’t get organic watermelon too often. Till this summer. I’m really excited about harvesting that crop!

Home gardening has become so popular in recent years you’re bound to run into fellow gardeners just about anywhere you go. An editor friend of mine pours over the seed catalogs around the top of each new year, just about the time his area of the country is blanketed in deep snow and cold. Perusing page after page of plants that represent the outdoors and warmer weather helps him slog through those long wintry days. We all cope in our own way with crummy weather, I happen to like his. He and I talk garden-talk whenever we’re in touch. Frankly, his enthusiasm is infectious, and it always revs me up to get digging and planting.

What’s the part you love most about gardening? Is it having your own supply of good food in your back yard (or side yard, or wherever you garden)? Or do you love being connected to the land and what that means---producing your own food for you and your family? For me, it’s both. I like knowing I can grow my own food, having the means and the place to do it; and I like being able to walk out the door, and cut a bunch of lettuce for dinner that night.

Looking into the future a bit---it’s never too soon to plan ahead for next year’s garden---I’d love to have a small greenhouse where I can grow my own organic bedding plants, give some away, and plant the rest. It’s a way to get even more connected to my food source, starting plants from seeds, and I love that possibility. By the way, Seeds of Change is a company that packages just about any kind of organic seed you could want, even flowers.

I’d also like to turn more of the yard into garden space, get with neighbors who like to garden but don’t have the time or space to do it, and offer a ‘community garden’ of sorts.

We’ve heard the ‘eat local’ food mantra for quite some time by now. 'Buy local' means different things for each of us depending on what we're looking for. Like beef; you can’t always buy local beef. And folks in the Upper Midwest don’t have access to local lemon growers, for one. So buying local should take on this meaning---buying from a food producer you know, and one that you trust.

Thanks to home gardening, eating local food doesn’t get any better than growing your own. Relying on yourself to get down and dirty for the sake of feeding yourself and your family offers not just food you can trust to put on your dinner table; it's the best way I know of to connect with your family who then connect with the land where your food comes from.

So now that I've bent your ear, bend mine. Let me know how your garden grows and how the experience has been for you, so far. Hey, you know what my favorite crop is gonna be…what’s yours?