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Keeping Up With The Joneses: Gardening Edition

You may know from a previous post that I have a square foot garden. In fact, this is the second year that I have gardened with this method. I thought it was going really well. That was until my neighbor invited me over to see hers. Wow! Major difference.

First off, she didn’t invite me over to brag or anything, it was actually because I asked her why there might be little holes appearing in my lettuce leaves. She replied that it was most likely slugs or snails and that she had just the thing for them (Slugg-o I think it was called). So I followed her to her backyard where I beheld the most spectacular raised-garden bed I have ever seen. We are talking perfect plants popped up in neat rows. We are talking plants that are about 1 foot taller than the same ones in my garden.

Humbled, I took the Slugg-o back to my miserable, crummy little garden-ette where my little lettuce plants were growing, with holes in almost all the leaves, up to about a height of 7 inches, max. Then she came over with two heads of bib lettuce, fully grown. Why? Because she had 10 heads ready to harvest, “and I couldn’t possibly eat that much” she said.

So now I have a heap of absolutely beautiful lettuce leaves drying on my kitchen counter, awaiting incorporation into tonight’s dinner salad. While I feel a bit of pang over my obviously inferior gardening skills, I at least will take comfort in the generosity of my neighbor in sharing with me. And I will eat a nice oriental salad with raspberry dressing, walnuts, and mandarin oranges. So at least there’s that.

Incidentally: here is what I learned about my garden. The number one thing it is lacking is full-sun. In my neck-of-the-woods we need all the sun we can get and I just don’t have enough where I put the box. So next year I am thinking of - gasp - putting the thing in our front yard! That is the only place that gets full-sun in my yard. It would be semi-shielded from the street given that we have a privacy berm out there.