Farmer Nick

One of the best features of our house is our backyard. It's big. It's surrounded by huge evergreens on either side and is thus very private. I was really excited about all of our green space last year as we led up to closing, so much so that we started seedlings in the bathroom of our old apartment so we could start a garden as soon as we signed the papers.

It didn't quit work that way. We kept a broccoli plant and a jalapeno plant alive over the course of the winter, and finally were able to put them in the ground back in April. I say we, but that isn't really true. Nick, my darling husband, has turned into a farmer. We knew we were serious about the garden this year, so we bought our seeds back in March. He started the seedlings while I was in Italy and also started working on the part of our backyard where we would have our plot.

Nick did everything by hand. He turned over the grass and worked through a foot of soil, removing the large rocks and aerating the dirt. No rented tiller for Nick, just his strength and sweat. We put the seedlings into the ground one weekend near the end of April. Nick has lovingly cared for our crop ever since. I thought I'd share a few pictures of his labors here, but will be featuring more of Farmer Nick in the future, when another project is a bit further along.

Here's the plot:

It's about 9' x 12'. Growing in it we have zucchini, jalapenos, bell peppers, broccoli, spinach, a romaine blend, carrots. One section of it is devoted to herbs, featuring parsley, cilantro, chives, dill, basil, thyme, and rosemary.

Since we knew that rosemary is extremely difficult to grow from seed, we decided to supplement our garden:


Now so far the rosemary in our garden is doing fine, but Nick wanted more. When we visited his sister in San Diego, she had a whole rosemary bush and I think Nick was a bit jealous.

It's only been in the last few days that we've been able to eat anything out of the garden so far (more on that in a moment), but we've got some things coming along nicely. Our zucchini plants are massive, and here we have our first blossom:


And here is a growing jalapeno from our year-old plant. I think we've gotten four or five off of it when it was an indoor plant (with some time out on nice days for pollination's sake), but it seems much happier in the ground:


Next, please pardon my terrible photo editing skills (I'm no good in Paint), but here is a side-by-side of our garden. On the left was about a week ago. The right photo was taken this morning:

On the left side of both shots are those massive zucchini I was talking about. Towards the right you can see our happy spinach and romaine.

Here it is from the other side. In the lower left, you can see our happy parsley and cilantro, with the dill in the upper center. The bottom right are the carrots, and the spinach and romaine are at the top right:


As I mentioned, we have only recently gotten to eat the fruits (vegetables) of Nick's labor. I pulled out a bit of dill for our tuna salad at lunch, but just the other day we clipped our first spinach leaves. They were getting so big and even though it didn't produce a lot of wilted spinach, it was still great to be eating something we've known since it was a seed.

Nick with his spinach:


Into the pan, with a little olive oil and garlic:


The master chef in action:


First bite! It was a good dinner that night: our own spinach with a Greek chicken salad stuffed in a pita. YUM:


We've got a bit more waiting to do until we harvest much else, but it's so fun to keep an eye on it, see the changes, and know that it's safely and organically grown. My little farmer isn't just a laborer. He's also become a bit of an expert, reading up on each thing we're growing, understanding how much water it needs, when and how to harvest, what to expect. It's already paid off.

Stay tuned for more tales of Farmer Nick, as I'll soon be profiling his work in another part of our yard.