Little Spring Garden

Well it's been a long, mild Knoxville winter, but in between thunderstorms the sun's out and things are looking up. For the past 8 spring seasons, I've lived in apartments with no sunlight, balconies, or backyards. This is the first chance I've had to plant anything close to a garden. There was a lot of talk all winter about tilling a huge plot in the back yard and growing rows of vegetables. Not so much action on that front, though. The yard's not flat, we rent this house, and it just wasn't really worth all that effort this year- particularly since I'm not even totally sure how to grow vegetables anyway.

So my 2009 container garden was born:


Now there are certain things that you can't really grow in a little pot, that I would have wanted to plant, but they're going to need to wait until next year (namely squashes and corn). I ventured down to the enormous Stanley's garden center in south Knoxville, and picked out some plants: yellow bell peppers, "sweet olive" grape tomatoes, "big rainbow" heirloom tomatoes, skinny eggplant, sweet basil, purple basil, sage, and chives. I rounded out the party with a big honkin' dill plant from a dude in a truck at the farmer's market this morning.

I'm pretty sure that the full size tomatoes aren't in big enough containers to really grow to their full potential. I'll be surprised if they take off. But the herbs are looking really great. The purple basil is the scene stealer. It's doubled in size in the first two weeks.


I have high hopes for the little eggplant though. And the grape tomatoes have taken off like crazy in two weeks. All the rain has helped I'm sure. Also, I think shoving three plants in one planter might have been overdoing it. But I have a feeling that it'll be a huge bush soon, and in a few weeks start shooting out more tiny tomatoes than I know what to do with.


I promise to take more pictures, especially when delicious food starts growing on my back stoop. Happy spring.