View From Your Garden: Life is Good When You Can Keep a Garden
Here's a VFYG submission from Cat. You can read more about her garden at her blog Growing on the Swan Slough.
I was practically raised in the farmers market scene, coming along with my mom while she sold her homemade soap and home harvested honey when I was a kid. A few years later she started Flying Tomato Farm of Snohomish, WA with my stepdad and I really started to get interested in growing food. I'd keep coming along to market and would also help out a little here and there in the greenhouse, then I was hired on as a farmers market seller by an organic farmer in the Skagit. For the past six summers I've spent my weekends peddling all sorts of unique heirloom fruits and vegetables: orange and pink striped beets, numerous varieties of fingerling potatoes, super sweet shuksun strawberries, snap peas and english shellers, fava beans, rainbow carrots, mixed greens with edible flower petals, peacock kale, speckled troutsback romaine, purple tomatoes, jahrdale and cinderella pumpkins and far much more. I have found a passion for produce and feel fulfilled when I can grow, cook and enjoy it!
This is the first year that I've really had the opportunity to get my very own garden going. It's been a very mild summer but I've done fairly well regardless. Right now I have all of the following growing in my garden: rhubarb, raspberries, blueberries, sugar snap peas, lacinato kale, brussel sprouts, french fingerlings, red thumb fingerlings, nordland potatoes, yukon gold potatoes and peruvian purple potatoes, red runner beans, blue lake green beans, turnips, candy onions, red onions, yellow onions, three types of sunflowers, marigolds, sugar pie pumpkins, delicata winter squash, jack o'lantern pumpkins, Japanese red pumpkins, hops, and in the greenhouse I have pink brandywine tomatoes, evergreen tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, basil, and agnes pickling cucumbers. Today, I harvested two wheelbarrows full of garlic! I had two spicy red hardneck varieties growing and elephant garlic. I feel soul-satisfied when I can get my hands into the dirt and raise my own crops to enjoy with loved ones at the dinner table. Life is certainly good when you can keep a garden!
Email me if you want to submit a pic and a paragraph about your garden.
