One Summer I Started a Garden

So after reading In Defense of Food, I started talking to Mom about cooking and the idea of trying to grow my own vegetables even though I don't have the green thumb to tackled a 'real' garden. Then she mentioned that her mom's (?) generation had planted Victory Gardens during the war. And after I started searching on victory gardens, I thought. "Most gardens are too big. I should write a book on how to garden in smaller batches. I could name the book square-foot gardening." I went to Amazon.com and sure enough, there was already a book called square-foot gardening and also tons of blogs from people giving it a go.

So despite the fact that we've had 100 degree heat here in Austin, I decided to start my own small patch and start getting the mistakes out of the way so I could learn something about growing food. Here's what I've got so far:Luckily we have a great organic gardening center where I can bag my own garden soil for $3/25lb bag. I just filled the 3x3 foot box with that and a little compost. I also bought 2 pumpkin plants, basil, oregano, rosemary, and garlic chive plants to get a jump start. But for fun, I also bought winter squash seeds. I planted one seed in the corner last week and it already has 4 leaves. Yeah!

I'm still worried about bugs, birds, and the fact that it's just darn hot, but I'm looking at the whole endeavor as an experiment. So I can't fail as long as I log everything and figure out what went wrong, right? : >

ps July 2008 is when I set out to start learning by doing. What a time of year to be inspired to be outdoors!