Dig Deep! Plant a Vegetable Garden and Grow Your Own Food
In the time of Corona, plant a vegetable garden and watch it grow your own food.
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To nurture a garden is to feed not only the body, but to feed the soul ~ Alfred Austin
I say, plant a garden and watch it grow your own food.
Gardening in the time of Corona
The world is now living in the time of the Corona pandemic. All of our lives have been turned upside town.
But my husband and I are grateful for our vegetable gardens and look forward to our harvest in the summer and fall.
We have had great success with our vegetable gardens. In spring 2017, my husband Jon and I planted our first vegetable garden. We researched gardening websites to learn how to go about planting one. We watched YouTube videos.
We made a list of the kinds of vegetables to grow. We drew a diagram of vegetables to grow next to each other and apart from each other. We decided on a 4 foot by 12 foot raised bed garden.
We then went to Home Depot for supplies. We bought 32 feet of 2" x 8" wood boards, chicken wire, mesh, and four stakes. We bought bags of organic garden soil to mix with the soil we dug from our backyard.
We lined the ground with chicken wire and plastic to prevent ground hogs from tunneling from below to pull out the roots.
Organic Vegetable Plants, Lavender, and Marigolds
We purchased small organic potted vegetable plants — 4 each of tomato plants, kale, red lettuce, romaine lettuce, strawberries, squash, eggplant, oregano, cilantro, spearmint, and red, orange, and yellow peppers.
To keep deer away, we bordered the four corners of the garden with the scent of perennial lavender plants.
Marigolds adorned the garden through out to attract bees, butterflies, and lady bugs.
We wrapped mesh around the stakes. We protected the garden with mesh to also keep away birds, groundhogs, squirrels, rabbits, and opossums from devouring the garden.
We Feasted
We finished planting our first vegetable garden in April. In May and through out the summer and autumn we feasted on kale, red lettuce, strawberries, spearmint, cilantro, and oregano.
The tomatoes were slower to grow but we picked them from the vines in July, August, and September. The peppers brightened the garden in August and September.
Kale, red lettuce, and romaine lettuce were plentiful all summer, and the strawberries grew like wild flowers.
Our first vegetable garden was a pleasant success. The only vegetables that failed to grow were eggplant and squash.
The following years, we planted asparagus and waited patiently to see them sprout. Asparagus take 2–3 years to grow. Finally, three years later, they have started to sprout this year.
We eat lots of salads in the summer time and since we started gardening we eat our home grown kale, red lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, spearmint, cilantro, oregano, strawberries, romaine, other greens, and soon asparagus.
My husband and I enjoy our harvest with dinner and lunch. I especially enjoy going to the garden right before lunch or dinner to cut what ever the garden has to offer on any given day.
We also plant spinach, cauliflower, and cantaloupe seeds in egg cartons and almond yogurt containers. We built another raised garden bed for these fruits and vegetables and grew the same vegetables from the previous years. This year we will try to grow watermelon.
Patience and Tender Loving Care
Planting a vegetable garden is not overwhelming. But it does require patience, willingness to learn, time, and tender loving care.
Read and watch useful gardening website and YouTube videos to help you build a raised bed vegetable garden.
The physical act of gardening and weeding, whether a flower or vegetable garden, is a very fulfilling, meditative, and spiritual experience.
There is so much more about vegetable gardening that we need to learn and master but the seed has been firmly planted.
The first year we planed our first vegetable garden, we were pleasantly surprised to see a stunning sunflower sprout, grow, wiggle its way through the mesh, and tower over to make the garden more magnificent all summer and autumn.
You never know what you’re going to get when you plant a vegetable garden!
For more tips, watch my YouTube video — Be A Runner & A Vegetable Gardener.
Planting a Vegetable Garden in the Time of Corona
The coronavirus pandemic has turned our lives upside down but it has also given us the opportunity to do things differently and to discover things we hadn’t considered.
Gardening and planting, whether a flower garden or a vegetable garden, is a good way to relax, take a break from the news, wash away your worries, and connect with dirt and the Earth.
If you don’t have a yard or space to build a vegetable bed, you can grow vegetables indoors. You can choose to grow a container garden, or a window bed garden.
Here are some good tips on how to grow vegetables indoors.
Go ahead. Plant a vegetable garden. Watch it grow your own food.
Miriam Diaz-Gilbert (aka Miriam Gilbert) is an ultrarunner, gardener, and published author working on her memoir.
