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My name is Mir, and I'm a vegetable gardener. Rather, I want to be a gardener. I mean, I garden. I do. But I have no idea what I'm doing.
I remember learning to cook. "If you can read, you can cook!" my mother always told me. I found that to be true; if you were willing to read a recipe, follow directions, and pay attention, it certainly seemed like anyone could be a successful cook. I figured growing food was probably a lot like cooking in that regard. So I started by doing a little bit of research.
A few years ago, I planted just a few things. Herbs, mostly, to kind of ease myself into it. I discovered which easy-to-grow edibles tend to thrive in containers, and tried a few of them, with varying degrees of success. Our modest harvest from that first year convinced me that, with preparation and vigilance, I could tend to a real garden.
The following year, I read up on square foot gardening and how to plant in raised beds. My husband put together planter boxes for me and I planned out our harvest. Of course, I had no idea how huge those zucchini and squash plants would get... or that they would throttle everything in their path. Oops. I didn't realize my creeping cucumber vines -- unable to find purchase within their tight confines in the box -- would wind here and there and give birth to oddly-shaped round monstrosities. I'd never heard of a tomato horn worm when I began (really, don't Google that unless you have a strong stomach), and found myself shocked at the heroic lengths to which I was willing to go to rescue my backyard 'maters.
At the end of last summer, I had a freezer full of Roma tomatoes and green beans and homemade pesto. I figured it was a good year, though I wasn't sure how much of a part my efforts had truly played in that success.
This summer, I figured I was an old hand. We put up trellises for the cucumbers and for the beans; the former, to keep the cukes off the ground, this time, and the latter because last year's bean windfall had dangled precariously from twine we'd strung in a hurry between the bean poles. I was ready with our homemade compost, diatomaceous earth to keep the bugs away, and what I thought was a measure of gardening acumen based upon the prior two seasons.
Well. The yellow squash plants died a mysterious death fairly early in the season. I have no idea why. And while one mighty zucchini plant remains -- and my freezer is stocked with zucchini bread -- no more zucchini seem to be forthcoming. Why? Beats me.
The cucumbers are loving the trellis, and we are loving the fresh cucumbers. But the last two I picked had bugs. Ugh.
For the third year in a row, my attempts to grow spinach have failed. We have rabbits, and that's all I think I need to say about that.
The beans have grown and flowered and the vines are a profusion of life ... except for the part where they actually, you know, produce beans. I see bees over there all the time, too. I have no idea why they're not producing.
The snap peas, which I decided to try for the first time this year, fought bravely against an influx of aphids earlier in the season. They struggled back to health just in time to be choked out by the bean vines. Oops?
Every single pepper plant I've nurtured and cheered on has been eaten up except for one, which currently sports a single bell pepper the size of a shot glass. I would be lying if I didn't admit I'm sorely tempted to pick it now before it dies.
My tomato plants are
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