Radish thinnings and limes from our kitchen garden.
Our kitchen garden has been a long time in the making. We overcame obstacles in the following ways:
- Thirteen years ago, we got a Victorian house with a kitchen door that opens directly into the back yard.
- Two years ago, we dug up a garden, planted it, and had the soil tested for lead. It was 1700 parts per million. The garden grew great, but we did not eat anything out of it. We learned from this garden. We did see that whatever we planted grew very well during a Galveston winter. (No freeze in 2011.) We saw how five kinds of lettuce grew, harvested cilantro for the beauty of its vegetation, and saw that I can actually grow dill. Then we let it go to seed, after which we let the weeds take over.
- We removed seven cubic yards of soil removed down one foot, lined the opening with landscape cloth, and had good planting mix topsoil (three parts per million lead) added in time for a fall 2013 garden.
- We had some surrounding vegetation removed to permit more sunlight into the garden.
- We bought 20 packets of seeds locally, and ordered one more package of seeds.
- We studied the seed packets for planting depth, and seedling emergence timing, amount of sun required, made a chart of the garden, and what to plant where.
- We executed this plan in one day in early September. Radishes, famously easy to grow, started emerging in merely three days! By now, two weeks later, even the last to emerge, sorrel, and chives, are sprouting.
- In the meantime we have already begun to enjoy our produce, thinnings of everything to put into salads!
Our garden ready to plant
Our garden one week after planting.
Radishes came up first.
Two weeks after planting, you can see faint rows of green seedlings which have come up.
Our garden is growing very quickly. Establishing roots and a growing plant look slow, but some of the seeds are the size of a grain of salt!