FAQ's

Let's get Back to the Garden for this post!

There are two questions people usually ask me when they find out I have a garden:

The first question is always: "What do you grow?"

I am always pleased to answer this as it is nearly never the same answer. Currently I still have those tomatoes I planted. They are not setting any new fruit because day-time and night-time temps are too high, so i am keeping them until the last green tomatoes turn red. I also planted Okra last week, which sprung up immediately. Okra is pretty hardy so I decided he would be best to endure the two hardest gardening months here in San Antonio. The other day the wind blew a layer of mulch to cover over two of the Okra seedlings and the doodle bugs had a feast, so I have re-planted them with some success. I also have some strung-out looking bell peppers that stop growing when they get to the size of large strawberries, I guess I must be doing something wrong. Oh, and let's not forget the Basil (i always forget to mention him). The Basil growing in my garden is delicious, I recommend eating it by wrapping a leaf of basil around a cherry tomato - Yum!

All these yellow flowers should be cherry tomatoes soon, but it's just too hot! :(

Strung-out Bell Peppers

Okra Sprout

Basil

The second question is usually something like: "Where (or how) do you build a garden?" 

Either way the second question usually hint's at the questioner's own inner desire to garden. Each of us have gardening in our genes (we were gardeners from the beginning), and we all have the desire to put something in the dirt and watch it sprout up and become food. The answer to this question is tricky, and it depends on a lot of things. I am not an expert, but I can tell you what has worked for me. 

I will be building a second garden in my backyard this week and I will post a how-to explanation with pictures. I will be using methods I learned about from my father-in-law Bo Cappadonna, and from diagrams that can be found in The Vegetable Gardener's Bible (there is a link to this book on the right column of this page).

Get your shovels ready!