Experience of A First Time Gardener

This past summer, I started my first vegetable garden in our community garden. The most frequent question I am asked is: "How long does it take for your garden to grow?" At the beginning, I wasn't sure. But now that I've gone through one planting season, the answer is...... It's a remarkably short time! Take a look at the pictures:

May 2nd, 2020

This is what the plot looked like when we first rented it. My gardening partner (Sapna) and I cleared out the straw (for weed suppression), re-aligned the plot borders with old fenced boards and started planting. We started with a rough layout of the garden plan, and put in a raised bed. We decided to plant most of our vegetables in pots because of gophers and other critters. (More on that in another post).

May 19th, 2020

By this date, we planted 2 tomato seedlings (Roma and Early Girl) and 2 cantaloupe seedlings in the raised bed. We had one serrano seedling and four zucchini seedlings in pots (2 Black Beauty and 2 Grey). We started the following from seed: watermelon, cucumber, corn, basil, cilantro, parsley, Asian chives, nasturtium, sunflower, cosmos, zinnia. Friends gave us seedlings for yellow squash, a variety of beans, snap peas, carrots, okra and curry leaf. We planted 2 rose bushes and a blueberry bush. We even had a scarecrow in the middle of the plot!

June 8th, 2020

By this date, we had more plants. Ginger, potatoes and sweet potatoes that had sprouted in the kitchen went in the garden. Kangkung (water spinach) and amaranth soon followed. 

August 1st, 2020

The height of summer is upon us. Everything is blooming! At this point, we've harvested beans, snap peas, corn, okra, kangkung, cantaloupe, tomatoes and enough zucchini to start getting bored of them. 

So to answer the question.... it took us 3 months to enjoy produce from our garden. How much work did it take? That will be for another post. Stay tuned.