Since I don’t have a garden of my own this year (you can read about why in my previous post, here) I decided to visit with fellow green thumbs and have them show me what they’re growing this year. So it was only natural that I start with the gardener who inspired me to grow vegetables, my dear friend Candice. Candice started gardening four years ago when her stepmother gave her two tomato plants. At the time she wasn’t too invested, but loved having fresh tomatoes come harvest time. With every season her enthusiasm grew and so did her garden. She loves to grow vegetables that yield a long or big harvest, like lettuces, tomatoes and zucchini. She found the broccoli she grew this winter to be anti-climactic. J This summer Candice’s garden includes tomatoes, zucchini, bell peppers, cucumbers, watermelon, a grapevine and Swiss chard still going strong. All started from seed (except for the bell peppers which never seem to take) and all organic. That was the only option for her. Her favorite thing about organic gardening is that her six year old daughter loves eating the fresh vegetables that they grow. The other day Ava picked a tomato off the vine and ate it like an apple. “She never would have done that with a tomato from the grocery store”, Candice told me. And although Ava is a notoriously picky eater, she always willing to try veggies from the garden and loves Swiss chard!
When I asked Candice her best trick or favorite gardening tool, she immediately said the drip irrigation system she and her husband Chuck installed last year. La Mesa is a town in the east part of San Diego County and it gets hot there, regularly reaching triple digits in the summer. Watering the gardening quickly became a chore. When her gardening “guru” (a friend’s mom whose been gardening for years) suggested she install drip irrigation she thought it sounded “hard core” - like a complicated and expensive thing. She was delighted to find out that $20, a trip to Home Depot and about an hour’s worth of work was all it took to change her garden forever! Everything began to thrive because it was watered more thoroughly and efficiently.
I’m excited to see how Candice’s garden does each year. The great (and sometimes frustrating) thing about gardening is that every year is different. It’s a lot like life, as Candice said “you get better every year, but still some things don’t do well and then there are surprises that do. You just never know.”
Photos by Kari Burks
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