Choosing Plants is Easier than Choosing a New Car

Last week through an unfortunate series of events, my car was totaled in an accident. So I've spent a good portion of last week when I wasn't doing rotations or precepting searching for a new one. By the time church got out this morning and it was time to go back into car shopping mode, it was the last thing I really wanted to do. I honestly thought I knew what car I wanted to get earlier this week. Now I'm not certain.

Turns out that car shopping and plant shopping are somewhat similar. I need a car that I can afford without a big loan, is reliable, gets good enough gas mileage so it won't break the bank when I have to fill it up every week, has excellent safety ratings, low maintenance costs, does well in snow... In addition, I want a car that handles very well--turns tightly, accelerates and slows down well, and has a a sunroof and manual transmission. I still don't know what I'll end up with--essentially it's all going to depend upon availability and price.

Choosing the plants for my kitchen garden is similar--it usually comes down to availability and the cost of plants and seeds. The varieties you start from seed may or may not survive long enough to make it into the garden, so it often comes down to what the nursery has available. Because I have very little space to work with and watering is such a chore, I have to take those factors into account in addition to the climate region the plants will be living in since I keep them outdoors. Disease resistant and heirloom varieties are usually best. Heirlooms have been around for a long time because they taste good. And diseases and pests can destroy the harvest. I usually choose dwarf varieties because my biggest problem is space.

One dwarf tomato variety I've enjoyed growing and plan to grow again this year (I did not take and do not own this photo) is called Tiny Tim. It's a very compact cherry tomato. Last year I had another dwarf patio tomato that produced tasty golden yellow fruit.

Herbs usually don't take up a lot of space. Planting several commonly used varieties in a window planter that can be pulled inside during the winter is a great way to A) have a constant supply of fresh herbs, and B) decorate. Here's a photo of my planter from last summer: 

From L to R: Thyme, Rosemary, Parsley & Oregano

In two separate pots I had chives (a perennial) and several different varieties of basil. Plan is to  start by rehabilitating the herb garden next week since it's still too cold out--in between work & car shopping. We'll see how well that goes...

The Plant I Didn't Have Space For

There was one thing I wanted to grow last year that I didn't have enough space for. I wanted to grow pumpkins. Something about growing the popular big orange winter squash for decorating and eating is really satisfying. Unfortunately, pumpkin vines take up an awful lot of space... Oh well. When I was eighteen, my younger sister and I both tried to grow the largest pumpkin for the Los Angeles County Fair biggest pumpkin competition. Her pumpkin was 3 inches bigger around. Mine was 2 pounds heavier. I won the competition because they measured by weight. She was really annoyed!

So this past fall, in between work and medic precepting shifts, I grabbed my roommate and a couple friends I know from the fire station and we took advantage of having local pumpkin farms.

I've never really been into pumpkin carving. I prefer to cook and puree the pumpkin so I can eat it.  But I was doing a favor for a friend at another volunteer rescue squad in my county and each crew gets an pumpkin to carve for a in-station competition. The other medic and I put our heads together and the result was a pumpkin with a Second Degree Type I heart block.

A Second Degree Type I heart block is characterized by increasing distance between the P-wave (the first small bump) and the QRS complex (the big up & down one) until there is a missed beat. I ended up carving a shallow 1/4in wide line in the outside of the pumpkin and then filling it with coffee grounds to make it easily visible.

I still had six pumpkins to use back at home. I've made lots of pumpkin pie but since I had never made pumpkin bread before and none of my cookbooks had a recipe, I looked online and found this wonderful one: 

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/downeast-maine-pumpkin-bread/detail.aspx

Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread Rated: Submitted By: Laurie Bennett Photo By: DetectiveL Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cook Time: 50 Minutes Ready In: 1 Hour 5 Minutes Servings: 24 "The classic moist pumpkin bread from Down East is spiced with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. This bread improves with age, so plan to make it a day ahead if possible." INGREDIENTS: 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree 4 eggs 1 cup vegetable oil 2/3 cup water 3 cups white sugar 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger DIRECTIONS: 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7x3 inch loaf pans. 2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans. 3. Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2014 Allrecipes.com Printed from Allrecipes.com 2/1/2014

I made it as directed except for replacing half the oil with applesauce and using 8"x4" bread pans. It turned out very well and I ended up making a big batch and giving it as Christmas presents.

I don't have a plan for this year's garden drawn up yet, but I'm not planning on having a space for a pumpkin vine. It's more cost effective to grow tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini. 

Starting a Garden on an Apartment Patio

Everything begins somewhere. My gardening experience started when I was a child helping my mom and younger siblings plant a garden in sunny southern California--where there are two seasons: the sunny season and the rainy season. My medic experience began Spring 2009--not long after I was first one scene when my youngest brother was hit by a car in front of our house and broke his arm.

 I didn't realize how much I'd miss gardening until I left for college in Virginia. Within two months I had a pansy growing on my windowsill. Six months later I had a small herb garden and a long-suffering African Violet. During my second year of college, I started volunteering with a local rescue squad and became an EMT. I loved learning about the anatomy and physiology, but unfortunately, they didn't cover enough of it to satisfy my curiosity. So after graduating from college and volunteer fire school (yay for being a smallish girl in turnout gear kneeling on top of the hose to control it), I got a job with a local ambulance transport company, moved into a small condo with two friends from college, and went to school for EMT-Intermediate Spring of '13 and graduated last summer. Finally I learned more about anatomy and physiology! To help deal with the stress of class, I started running and expanded my small potted garden. My schedule was ridiculous, and I only had a few hours here and there to work on the garden.

Last year, the garden began with a packet of tomato seeds. I found a dwarf tomato variety that was perfect for a pot. This is a different variety, but ended up in a pot on my patio as well.

Our condo is on the ground floor and includes an approximately 8x10 ft concrete patio outside a sliding glass door. There was a small area of grass between our patio and a neighbors patio (3.5x4ft) that I decided to turn into a small vegetable patch. 

As soon as the ground thawed in February, I started by removing the top layer of sod. Turned out there was a 6in layer of gravel 4in beneath that layer of sod...yay. It took me two months to painstakingly pick out pieces of gravel out so I could dig up another 8in of soil. 

Sometime in May, I found a beat up old rocking chair by the dumpster in the apartment complex. It soon had a permanent home on my patio. It was so relaxing to come home after Intermediate class or a long hospital rotation, go for a run on the trail, spend half an hour working on the garden, and then sit in the rocking chair watching the sunset and the fireflies after dinner.

By the end of the summer, I had about thirty-eight pots of varying sizes containing a variety of flowers and vegetables.

I choose to use a mixture of organic and commercial fertilizer and pest control products. They worked for the most part, but I still had a big problem with mealy bugs. A swallowtail caterpillar made it's home in my Parsley and two praying mantises took up residence in the garden in April, and helped with pest control.

 In late June, I started to get my first harvests. The most difficult thing was keeping everything watered. There is no outside hose. So it was a daily thirty-minute chore to haul the requisite eight gallons of water using a watering can (I have two of them: a 1/2 gallon and 2 gallon) from the kitchen sink to the garden. 

By August, the place was starting to get overgrown. The tomatoes were too tall for their stakes--eventually breaking the stakes and my zucchini plants were trying to knock down the little wire fence surrounding them.  

My cucumbers had reached the top of their trellis and were going down the other side. I started giving produce away because my roommates and I couldn't eat it before it went bad.

 By October, pretty much everything I'd planted was done. By then I was precepting as a medic at work and with my volunteer rescue squad, had just begun an Intermediate to Paramedic bridge course and was taking a condensed (8-week) college level Anatomy & Physiology class. The cold weather had killed off most of the annuals, so I left the pots sitting out for the winter.

As soon as the ground thaws enough for me to dig in it, (hopefully later this month) I'll start turning it over getting ready for planting in the spring. I can't wait.