Cynthia Kuhn, Mysteries

Garden Dreams

We’ve planted gardens in the past—usually perennial flowers that come back year after year. We had this one rock garden that made me so happy every spring, the way that the flowers just magically appeared when it was time. I still miss it.

We have also had vegetable gardens that flourished. We didn’t do much besides plant the seeds and install a drip line. (Since then, I have become aware that most vegetable gardens require more tending than that. We just got lucky, I guess? It’s a mystery.) But while we have planted flowers in our current house, we haven’t started a vegetable garden yet: the way that electrical and cable lines were installed before we got here, we can’t dig in the only spot available for the garden.

But we have a dream! So we have done the following.

  • Looked up raised garden containers.
  • Found covers for the raised garden containers because: squirrels and beetles.
  • Figured out how much garden soil we would need.
  • Researched which things to plant together and which things to avoid planting together.
  • Measured the space in the backyard to determine container layout.

To date, however, we have only completed phase one: we bought packets of seeds.

If we move on to phase two—all the other things in the list above—what suggestions do you have for us? OR what would you plant in a garden if you could?

(If this doesn’t work out, we can always go back to the rock garden. But one can’t eat rocks, so that plan does have its drawbacks.)

32 thoughts on “Garden Dreams”

  1. Try a couple of pots with tomatoes and peppers I have done a raised bed and I love it once you mix the new dirt with the dirt already there it makes it like new. If you compost leaves, egg shells, coffee grounds and other composable items you will have new dirt for next year. You just do layers of dried leaves and food scraps do not add any meat only vegetable scraps. You do not even have to turn it over just remove the top layer of scraps and the good dirt is at the bottom. Deborah

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  3. Hope you get a flourishing veggie garden, Cyn! We did a raised garden once; hubby built the container. Harvesting tomatoes was a lot of fun…but the tomato worms were not. We eventually planted some herbs and left it at that.

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    2. I love herbs! That’s what I want. An herb garden. Mint, oregano, basil, thyme. In those fun rom-coms, as the main character cooks lunch or dinner, they pinch a couple of slices from the flower pots on their kitchen windowsill. I want to do that.

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  4. Best wishes to you! My wife gardened back in the day. She enjoyed it but it was a lot of work. My job was to stay away so I didn’t accidentally destroy something.

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  6. You need to talk to Grace Koshida about how to deal with squirrels, since she’s been waging a battle with one (whom she named Satan) for years now. We have gophers in Santa Cruz, which are even worse: one chomp underground on that root and the entire plant is a goner.

    So my advice is plant things the squirrels and gophers don’t like as much, such as tomatoes and peppers.

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  7. Cynthia, I love your plans. It sounds like my dream garden. I wish you so much good luck and happiness with it. I hadn’t realized how much I want to grow herbs on my kitchen windowsill until I read your post. Ha!

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    2. Aw, thank you so much, Patricia! And now I want you to grow herbs on your windowsill…and I want to grow herbs on my windowsill too! Sending the good luck and happiness right back your way. 🙂

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  8. Cynthia, I am right there with you! When we first moved into this house it had a beautiful veggie garden. We enjoyed the first few years, but after a few summers of either too hot or too rainy our luck (and all the hard work of the previous owner) ran out. We planted way too many beans, the watermelons were tiny, and the pumpkins never grew. The carrots were great but…so few and tiny. My hubby built an above-ground planter for herbs, and now we just grow cherry tomatoes in 2 large decorative pots on the deck. And then…we hit a local farm store to buy their fruits and veggies! (Oh, and we do have blueberry bushes, which are great if we can beat the birds and bears to them.)

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    1. The previous owners of our home also had a veggie garden. They put it in the middle of the lawn. We believe that’s why all the bunnies in the area would congregate in our backyard. My husband and I replaced the garden with…lawn. Years later, a few bunnies still stop by to look at us with contempt before hopping along.

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        1. They’re eating our burning bushes, which is fine. It’s the backyard. My husband and I aren’t that worried about it. They’re also using the space beneath our deck as a vacation home. It’s not their permanent residence but sometimes we see them dashing from under the deck. Ha!

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