Although we had a garden last year (2005) this year was the first time we got it to really work! We cleared a 12-foot by 22-foot rectangle in the backyard, mixed some topsoil into the silt/sand mixture already there, and planted some things Jaime and I both liked.
We ordered our seed from Gurney's, an old gardening catalog that also has a website now. Besides the fact they sent our order very late in the season, we still had good success. This year we planted 6 tomatoes (2 roma, 2 cherry, and 2 Big Beef), Virginia peanuts, garlic, onions, potatoes, and an interesting collection of sweet hybrid pepper.
The peppers are what have fascinated me this year. The packet had 35 seeds and I planted them as soon as they arrived in early April. (In a perfect world I would have received the seeds in early March. Are you listening Gurney's?) There was no way to tell what I was going to get since the seeds (and the seedlings!) all looked identical. I had an almost 100% germination rate and moved virtually all the plants into the garden by late April. The first to begin blooming and producing fruit were the standard green bell peppers. Because of the very late start I got, blooms didn't appear until mid June and the first peppers weren't ready for harvest until almost the end of July. That's still fine I suppose given our long growing season. In fact as of this writing (end of August) the peppers are still blooming heavily, promising loads of peppers into the fall.
We've had other success stories this year. The Yukon Gold potatoes were fun to grow and even more fun to eat. The onions were planted from seed and against all odds ended up producing a large crop of small but very tasty onions. In fact we've still got a couple still growing larger despite the calendar. Peanuts are super-easy to grow here with the loose sandy soil. In fact the coastal plains of Georgia through the Carolinas into southeast Virginia are known for their peanuts. I'll do good to remember to plant them closer together next year so that they choke the weeds out better than this year.
The tomatoes, despite getting a minor infestation of aphids late in the spring, managed to bear very heavily and often from late April through mid summer. As often happens now in August, the leaves are beginning to die off from the ground up. The upper portions of the cherry tomato vines are still flowering and fruiting but the remainder of the plants aren't looking so healthy. Apparently no amount of watering or fertilizer can help this out.
We also have some other gardening-related additions to the yard this year. One I'm particularly proud of is my 5-in-1 apple tree from Gurney's. For those of you who have never heard of this concept, it will amaze you. Small limbs from five different types of apple trees are grafted onto one trunk. Each limb will eventually produce its own variety of apples, all on the same tree! We received this tree in the mail in mid March and were amazed beyond belief to see blooms, a few weeks later, and APPLES emerge a few weeks after that. Given this early success I can't imagine what this tree will look like in 5 or 10 more years.
We also ordered a Belle of Georgia peach and two Manchurian Apricots for Jaime. One of my co-workers actually asked the New Hanover County agricultural extension agent about growing peaches in the Wilmington area. The simple answer was "it won't work" because of all the naturally occurring diseases in our humid climate. (wish we'd asked earlier!) We've been able to turn back a serious bacterial leaf infection with periodic applications of Captan solution. A growing green/purple bark discoloration has proven more difficult to treat. We'll just have to see how this works.
Gardening is fun, saves money in the long term, and provides a wonderful diversion from the hectic pace of modern life. It would be easy to get frustrated waiting long months for small seedling to grow into productive plants but the reward makes the long wait worth it. If you've got a little open spot in your backyard and aren't currently gardening, give it a try!
