Aerogarden Update

It's been a week and a half now that I've had my little white Aerogarden, and I thought I'd post an update.  It's doing pretty well, for a $30 clearance model.  The plants are growing pretty well, though not as quickly as the videos on the Aerogarden website would have you believe.

The biggest problem I've been having with my little Aerogarden has been the bubbler.  The reviews of this specific model have people saying that the pump stopped working a few days in, so I was prepared for that to happen.  Sure enough, a few days after setting it up, the pump seemed to not be working.  I took the tank off the base, and the pump started working again.  Hmm...  What I found was that the bubbler holes had gotten clogged; who knows if this is because of our hard water, or the sediment from the plants or the nutrients you add to the water.  At any rate, I just poked the holes clear on top, then cleared the tube on the bottom that connects to the pump, and set it back on the base.  Works like a charm!

Of course, it was clogged again in the morning (it seems to happen over night, when the pump is off), so I got out my bead reamer and made the holes bigger.  That really helped.  Now I only have to poke the hole on the bottom every couple of days to get things working. 

Here's the bubbler with bubbles.

I had planted lettuce in two of the pods instead of the herbs, because I'm more of a lettuce person anyway.  They're doing great!  One set of seeds didn't sprout; I'm guessing they're no longer good, since the packet's quite old.  So I took those out and planted some of my new seeds that I got this year, a variety called Magenta. 

Black Seeded Simpson in the middle, and Magenta on the right.

I did plant the basil seeds that came with the garden, and it's finally starting to show its little green face.

Teeny tiny basil seedling just coming up.

Now, as you may recall, I said last time that I might be getting the biggest, nicest, newest model of Aerogarden.  I wasn't sure if I'd get it at the time, but it turns out I did, so now I can tell the story about it.

The night I bought the little Aerogarden at Walmart, I went to Aerogarden's website to see what other models they sold and how much they cost.  They sell a lot of different models, from ones that look like the one I bought, to six and seven hole ones, all the way up to the huge 9 hole models with touch screens and automatic everything.  The really big ones were about $300 (unless you got the stainless steel one, and then it was nearly $400!).  So, curious, I clicked on the black one to read what it had to say, and I noticed something funny.  At the top of the page, it said the model was $300 and would be $250 if you used a coupon they were offering.  However, down below, where you added the item to your cart, it said it was $85.  Hmm...  So I added it to my cart to see if it actually would register, and indeed it showed up as $85 in my cart.  Hmmmmmmmmmm.  Then I added the coupon code, and it came down to $68.  HMMMMMM!

I consulted my husband about the situation.  He was a boy scout for a long time, and his scout friends said he was honest to a fault; when I have a tricky moral issue, I talk to him about it.  Would it be wrong to buy this device knowing that they had to give it to me for the price listed on the website?  Would he think badly of me if I did?  He said that he wouldn't think badly of me, and it was the company's fault for not catching the mistake earlier (he's also a programmer, so he can see it from that perspective too).

So I bought it!

And the company sent it to me!  When it came, the receipt said I'd paid $250, so I checked out my card, and it turns out I only paid the $68.  I even got free shipping.

(They did fix their mistake the next day.  Which is a good thing, because if they hadn't, I was very tempted to go buy another one with a $50 off coupon I had found, and that really would have been wrong.)

And here's my new beauty, the Aerogarden Bounty.

Ooooh, ahhhhh....  Shiny...

And like the little one, it came with a set of seed pods and a bottle of nutrients.  I ordered the heirloom lettuce seed kit with this one.

And for comparison, here's the little one next to the big one.

Aerogarden 3SL next to the Bounty.  Huge difference!

It was pretty simple to set up.  The Bounty has a touch screen that has a walk through when you first start it up.  Just select the type of veggie you're growing, set when the lights will come on and off, add water, nutrients, and seed pods, and there you go.

It's a pretty sleek looking device, too. 

The lights are crazy bright.  I have it set up in our computer room (a large bedroom that has our computers, my sewing machine, Chad's music stuff, and our exercise bike), and at night, we don't even need to turn other lights on.  It's energy effecient, too, because they're LED.  I think the whole thing takes 40 watts.

It has white, blue and red lights so your plants get the kind of light they need to grow.

It's been nearly a week now, so I took some more photos of it last night.  All but three of the pods ahe started growing.

Aerogarden guarantees that the pods will grow, and will send you new ones if you need them.  I asked Chad if that would be wrong for me to get new pods if these ones don't grow, and he said that yeah, it probably would be.  So what I'm thinking about doing is bringing up the three pods from the little garden and putting them in the big one, and then using the little one to either grow tomatoes (yep, you can do that), or start seeds in.  We'll see :)

My New Garden Toy

I spend a little time over at the Square Foot Garden forum through the winter.  There's not much to talk about, plant wise, but it's nice company in the dead of winter with like minded folks who are also itching to start planting.  One of the people there said she got an Aerogarden for Christmas, and not really knowing what that was, I decided to spend some time researching it.

What I found out is that Aerogardens are small hydroponic systems that take the thinking out of hydroponics.  When I think hydroponics, I usually envision crazy tubes and light setups, plus lots of ph testing and carefully balanced nutrients.  Apparently, the Aerogardens are set up so it's neat, compact, comes built in with everything it needs, and takes a universal liquid nutrient.  Then you just pop in seed pods that the company sells, push a button, and it pretty much grows itself.

Now you might not think I'm interested in something like this.  I mean, I may not have a very big yard, but I do in fact have a yard and soil and gardens to work with, and I don't really need to depend on a hydroponic system to grow food.  However, if you were thinking that, you clearly don't know me very well.  The instant I saw these adorable little growing devices, I started wanting one something fierce.  I mean, how cool would it be to have fresh lettuce in the middle of winter, or a fresh vine ripened tomato?  Just being able to watch something grow, even herbs, would fill up my dreary winter days!  I suppose I could plant some seeds in pots and put them under my grow lights in the basement, but somehow that's not the same.  Partially because, once seed starting season comes (mid February for me), I could no longer grow indoor lettuce because I would be starting outdoor onions, which are far more important and pressing.

The thing about Aerogardens are that they're very expensive, in my opinion.  The smallest, cheapest one sells for $65 on Amazon, and the extremely nice ones are nearly $300.  I would certainly pay that much if it grew as much as my outdoor garden, but not for a device that has up to 9 slots to grow things (that's for the big one; the small one grows 3 plants).

Well, as luck would have it, Chad and I were walking through Walmart last night, looking through their outdoor gardening section (yes, I am obsessed), and I happened to spot a display of small Aerogardens on clearance.  They were the small cheap ones, originally selling for $50 in Walmart, marked down to $30!  So I grabbed one.  I figured this is a cheap way to see if I like the system.

It's the one with three holes to plant in, and it came with the herb kit of basil, dill and parsley.

It came with the device, a bulb, three seed pods, and a bottle of nutrients.

I'm not exactly a fresh herb person.  I like growing herbs, but I always forget to use them.  I mean, what would I use fresh dill in, anyway?  I rarely use the dried dill I have.  And although I like parsley, it doesn't exactly have an amazing flavor or anything that would make me want to use fresh over dried.  I do, however, really enjoy fresh basil, even if I don't use it very frequently.  So I ended up digging the seeds out of the dill and parsley pods, and putting in some Black Seeded Simpson lettuce and some Baby Oakleaf lettuce seeds in those pods instead.

Now it's all set up and running.  Since getting this yesterday, I have found out that this particular model is the worst one they sell and it's not uncommon for the motor to stop running or the light to burn out.  Still, even if I only have a 60% chance of having a good experience with this thing, it'll be fun trying.  I set it up in our dining room so I can watch it grow, although I think I want to move it to somewhere more out of the way.  The light is really bright, and kind of takes away the nice ambiance I have going on.  The nice little trickling water sound it makes is a nice touch, though.

Yes, that's a fruit basket on the right, and a fruit basket shaped cookie jar on the left.  Why do you ask?

I may be getting the largest, nicest version of the Aerogarden, but there's a story behind that and I'm also not 100% certain I'm actually going to receive it, so we'll save that for another day.  Until then, at least I have this little beauty trickling in my dining room.  Lettuce usually takes about three days to sprout when I grow it in seed starting mix, so I think by the 26th or the 27th it should be up!  I'll be certain to post updates.

Dreams of a Greenhouse

As a homemaker, I don't usually get much time off.  There's always something to be cleaned, cooked, or picked up.  But every Thursday, I try to give myself a little slack to do whatever I want to do.  I still feed the mouths and  do the dishes, but otherwise I just chill.  And today, that chilling involved a lot of daydreaming.

As I've mentioned before, I live on a small lot in the city; I cram as much garden stuff as I feel comfortable with, but I'd really like more room.  One thing I really dream about having is a greenhouse.  I'm not sure why.  It's not like I really know how a greenhouse works exactly, or what kind of advantages it has.  I mean, I know you can start your plants early in a greenhouse and it keeps things warm for warm loving plants like peppers and melons, but it seems like there's something I'm missing.

Even so, I still wish I had room for one.  A special little place for my plants, where I could start my seeds outside instead of my cramped basement; somewhere warm enough so I can get more than one shriveled little sad looking pepper on my otherwise healthy looking pepper plants; and maybe ever somewhere that I could extend my season and have fresh homegrown greens through the winter.  What a lovely thought.

But do you see a place for a greenhouse here?  Really?

Property line is easy to tell on the left; right property line is just passed the clothesline.  Back line is about where the compost is.

I mean, I guess there is a bunch of space in the center there.  But how silly would that look?  I would like to sell this house within 10 years, and I think a giant greenhouse in the middle of the lawn would make it a bit hard.  The garden is probably going to be a problem as it is.  Maybe I could put a greenhouse over the whole of the garden, and then just take the thing down when we go to move...  But a greenhouse that big would probably be pretty expensive.  Plus, I'm not sure how well you can grow spring crops in a greenhouse.

Well, in my dreaming this morning, I started wondering what kind of little greenhouse-like things garden companies sell.  Well, let me tell you; quite a few!  Most of them are either tall plastic pop-up things that pretend to be mini greenhouses, or short plastic pop-up things that go over an existing garden.  But I found a couple of them that are both a raised bed garden and a greenhouse at the same time, and this one in particular kind of caught my eye.

I happen to have a spot on the south side of my house that's still (miraculously) empty.  Between my raspberry canes and the cement slab next to the side porch, there's a space that's maybe 5x5 feet that's empty lawn.  Now we do  get some chives that grow there, and some mint that's crazy wild, but this thing is cool enough to put over those things.

However, it's also a spot where, every late winter/early spring, a huge chunk of ice falls off our room.  And I mean huge.  Usually 4x2x1 feet and weighing at least 100 pounds.  It sounds like the roof is coming in when it falls down.  And the greenhouse would be right in the way of that.  Shoot.

Ahh, but!  They also make a smaller one.

And this one looks like it's small enough to avoid the impact of the ice boulder.  It's 2'x4', and is meant to sit against a wall.  Which is perfect, since I have a wall right there.  It's empty underneath so you can put supplies there, but I probably won't do that.  It'll just be nice to not have to weed that whole area.  It usually gets full of monstrous weeds by the middle of summer because we don't mow that side of the house, and certain unnamed husbands don't weed wack but once or twice a season.  And also, I'm lazy.  Although it might be nice to get all those bags of compost out of the garage.... hmmmmm....

Anyway, I already bought the little greenhouse, lol.  It was $249 on Amazon, but Burpee had it for $199, plus I found a 20% off coupon online.  Score!  So after the $25 shipping, it was only $185, woot!

My plan is to fill it with premade raised bed soil mix and then plant peppers in it!  I'm so excited to actually grow peppers and maybe get something from them!  I've tried peppers every year since I started gardening, and every year I'm disappointed.  They do sooo well in my basement; they're tall, with thick stems and bushy leaves, and some even start getting buds by the time I start hardening them off.  And they still look nice when I put them in the ground, but they stop growing so quickly, start looking a little small, and then the peppers, once they start coming, are so small and sad looking.  The only time I got decent peppers was when I grew jalapenos, and I've heard that hot peppers can withstand colder weather better than sweet peppers.  Which is good to know, living in the north, but I don't like hot peppers.

I've seen some other northern living people do great with peppers when they grow them in greenhouses or hoop houses, which is great.  So I'm hoping that my new toy will act as a greenhouse and keep my plants warm enough to actually get some peppers!

I guess we'll see how it goes.  Even if it doesn't increase my pepper yields, it'll be nice to have more growing space and a place to maybe start some seeds early (or have lettuce late in the season), and somewhere sheltered to harden off my plants in the spring.  Yay!

To totally change the subject, check out what Chad and I saw in the backyard the other day.  Keep in mind that we live in the city.

As far as I can tell, he's either an 8 or 9 point buck.

I'm pretty sure he was after this lady.

There was also another lady in the neighbor's backyard.  We had to do a bunch of shouting and waving of arms to get them to get out of our yard.  (Note: always be careful around deer, especially bucks, during breeding season!)  They came back a few times; sometimes they were just laying in our yard in front of my garden!  What the heck?  We shooed them off every time, because I certainly don't want them getting cozy.  Deer are the most destructive animals in my yard.  Which is silly, because the closet woods are about a mile away.  Ok, half a mile away, but still, that's half a mile they have to walk through the streets to get to my house.  Across a busy road and a school and sardine-packed houses.  Silly animals. 

My Big Garden Dreams

It's been quite a while since I last blogged.  Again.  I have a habit of doing that sort of thing; one minute I'm totally into something, and the next I don't want anything to do with it for months or years at a time.

Like gardening.  Around September, I'm usually getting pretty sick of gardening.  Which is ridiculous, because that's when so many of my plants come to harvest, but for some reason I just get bored with the whole thing.  Then around December, usually when the first catalog appears in the mail, I'm so ready to start gardening again that it's embarrassing.  "Weren't you just sick of gardening like yesterday?" I might hear from certain unnamed husband.  Yes.  I was sick of gardening.  And now I'm not.

I have so many big plans for my garden, which is silly because my garden is very tiny.  Somehow, on roughly a 40x70 foot piece of backyard (that's very shady in one corner and has the house shadow during half the day in the rest of the yard), I've managed to plant and grow:

2 apple trees
4 blueberry bushes
2 five foot long raspberry brambles
1 2x4 foot strawberry patch
4 4x4 foot raised vegetable beds
1 1x16 foot raised vegetable bed
1 2x4 foot raised vegetable bed
As many veggie buckets as I can find space for
Two pretty nice flower gardens
Not to mention room for a swing and a clothes line

Here's a bad drawing of what it looks like.

My back yard

As you can see, it's quite cramped.  The driveway abuts the neighbor's property, but we do have about five feet on the other side of our house of ground where I put my strawberries, a small veggie garden and a patch of raspberries.  And yes, the flowers and compost at the very back of the yard are actually partially off of my property.  But the house behind ours is condemned, so whatevs.  I don't think anyone will mind too much.

So yeah, small city garden with big country dreams.  I keep looking at the catalogs and dreaming about what I wish I could do.  I wish I could put an arbor above the entryway for my main garden and grow grapes on it.  I wish I could have a greenhouse or hoop house to grow peppers and melons.  I wish I could grow pumpkins or winter squash.  But I have to face the fact that I have a small shady yard and that I have to be happy with what I have right now.

One of the more major things I'm doing next year is planting new raspberries.  The last couple winters have been killers in our area.  2013/2014 was what they call an open winter; we had almost no snow at all.  Which is great, except it was also extremely cold.  We got down to -15 or lower for weeks, and the ground froze five feet deep.  That killed my raspberries to the ground.  They did miraculously send up new shoots, but being summerbearers, that meant that I would have to wait until the following summer to get any berries.  Well, the winter of 2014/2015 was equally cold, except it also had record breaking amounts of snow.  I think we had four feet of heavy packed snow in our back yard, which protected the bottom part of the canes but the parts that were above the snow died off.  The hard winters were especially rough for the patch on the north side of the garage, and they started dying off from some kind of disease shortly after spring came around.  I decided that I was tired of dealing with harsh winters and raspberries that weren't up to the challenge, so I pulled up all those canes, dug in a lot of really good soil amendments, and planted some runner beans there to help boost the soil fertility.

The raspberry plot after adding lots of good stuff

I read about a cool new raspberry that Cornell University bred a few years back called Double Gold.  It's a blushed gold everbearer raspberry with high disease resistance, designed for cooler regions (Cornell is afterall in NY state, just like me).

Double Gold raspberry

There's a nursery that Cornell had grow it for them that's actually just an hour's drive from here, so I'm totally thinking about driving up there instead of paying $20 shipping.  The cool thing about everbearer raspberries is that they produce on first year canes.  As in, they grow a cane and then berries form on it the same year.  Whereas summerbearer canes, like the ones I have, grow canes one year and then produce berries on it the next summer, which is ok as long as the canes don't die back every winter!

I'm such a rambler.  I really meant for this to be a short post with some ideas for my garden next year, but I've already gone on a ton!  So maybe I'll shorten things up a little.

I managed to save a lot of seeds last year, so I really don't need to buy many.  I do want to try a couple new varieties, though.  My plans for new plants are:

 Cherokee purple tomato

Dragon's Tongue

New York Early 

Cosmic Purple

Not actually new, but I need more

Hidatsa Sheild

Sweet Pickle

I haven't really decided on lettuce yet, but I would like to try a crisphead type (iceburg) to go with my green towers romaine I already have.  I need to get some shelling peas too, but that's one of those things were it doesn't seem to matter what variety you get because they're all the same.  

So those are some rough plans so far.  I'm still dreaming about the greenhouse and the grape arbor, but I guess those will have to wait a while until we can buy our country home. 

Wordless Wednesday: Garden Update

New Toy

I'm a gardener.  I'm sure I've mentioned this before.  It's one of my greatest pleasures, one of the things I'm proudest of, and, sometimes, one of my biggest annoyances. 

Yes, friends, my plant babies sometimes annoy the crap out of me.  A parent probably shouldn't say things like that about their children, but my babies are plants and they don't usually speak English, so what the heck. 

The problem?  Peas.  I have a lot of peas in the garden.  A lot of peas.  The thing with pea plants, or most vining vegetables, actually, is that if you don't keep them picked, they will stop producing veggies.  They put all their energy to creating seeds, which is great if I'm trying to collect seeds, but most of the time I'm not. 

And peas, they're green.  And they like to hide deep inside their leafy vines, where you're least likely to find them.  Unless you spend a lot of time sorting through very fragile vines and leaves, you're bound to miss one or two, sending the whole plant the signal that it's time to stop producing peas.

I used to have the same problem with green beans, which are also a leafy, vining plant with green pods, but last year I got smart.  I ordered a variety called Purple Podded Pole Bean.  It's the most awesome thing ever invented.

 

Not only are they pretty (they have a lovely purple flower and red vines), but the beans are incredibly easy to find on the plant.  Plus, they're a heavy producing plant with large beans.

So while I was digging through fragile pea vines, I thought to myself, do they make purple peas?  They would have to be purple sugar snap peas (the fat, crispy kind you can eat whole, shell and all), because English peas (the kind where you can only eat the peas inside the shell) just aren't worth my time.  I know there are varieties of purple English peas, but that wouldn't do.  

I asked the internet.  There are several people in the process of producing purple sugar snap peas, along with purple snow peas.  There are yellow peas.  There are purple soup peas.  Apparently there's a kind of bean called a purple hull pea that they grow in the south.  Hmmm...

And then I found it!  On an obscure little seed page, I found a variety of pea called Sugar Magnolia.

Apparently, it's a heavy producer that can grow up to eight feet tall, and it has a quirky trait called hyper-tendrilling, where instead of having one set of tendrils that it uses to grasp onto things, it has lots of sets. 

It's a hard seed to find, though.  No one owns a seed patent and it's not an heirloom, so no big seed company wants to carry it.  I managed to find someone on ebay selling 50 seeds for $2, so I snagged it.  I figure I'll try it out, and if I like it, I'll save my own seeds for next year.  While I was there, I also grabbed another kind of hard to find, unusually colored pea called Opal Creek.

It's a yellow sugar snap pea, which should also be easy to find while picking.

And the other day, I got my new seeds in the mail!

I plan on planting them for the fall.  Peas are a cold weather crop, and full sized plants usually die out during the hottest months.  I usually plant the fall seeds as soon as I pull out the spring plants, and they start producing once the weather cools down a little bit.

When these guys start producing, I'll be sure to take lots of pictures.

My Organic, Low Carb Garden

I have a garden.  A very lovely garden.  It grows all kinds of flowers, and it's lush and beautiful.  Bees love my garden, and I have more dragonflies than a marshy swamp.  I spend many hours in my garden, and it brings me great joy.

I bet you think I have a really awesome English cottage garden, or a well planned Japanese garden.  No, not even close.

I have a vegetable garden.

A tiny little backyard vegetable garden, as a matter of fact.  A raised Square Foot Garden.  But it's my pride and joy, and it brings me more happiness than I can describe.

The cool thing about my garden?  It's low carb, and also organic. 

I went to a little trouble this year to plan a low carb garden.  Last year, I planned and planted my garden before I even knew the science behind low carb, so I was growing potatoes and corn, and probably other starchy vegetables that I can't remember now.

Another cool thing about my garden?  It's tiny by most garden standards, but it's able to produce almost all the vegetables Chad and I need through the summer, not to mention many pounds of fruit.

Here's my garden plan, which I made with my favorite garden planner, Gardeners Kitchen Garden Planner.

My garden isn't exactly the same as this picture; I tend to go with the flow and sometimes I can't be bothered to do it exactly like the chart says.  So there are no Brussels sprouts in the bottom right square garden, there are English peas instead of the second row of beans in the top left square garden, and I planted a dwarf tomato in one of the pepper spots.  But it shows pretty well what I did.  In case you can't tell what I've got in there based on those pictures, here's a list:

Cucumbers

Tomatoes

Bush beans

Pole beans

English peas

Onions

Radishes

Bush zucchini

Vine zucchini

Turnips

Beets

Garlic

Kohlrabi

Peppers

New Zealand Spinach

Loose leaf lettuce

Romain lettuce

Sugar Snap peas

Carrots

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Cabbage

Daikon radishes

Watermelon

Strawberries

Blueberries

Raspberries

And the only thing I have that I have growing that isn't strictly low carb is two small squares of dry beans, which I grew mostly out of curiosity and that I plan on eating slowly.

Organic vegetables can be pretty expensive, which is why I like growing my own.  Plus, I have such a love for nature, that I feel like it's the only way you should be growing vegetables.  I'm not saying it's always easy, but it does have its advantages.  Like, did you know that using pesticides actually increases your pest problem in the long term?  Plus, you can go out into your garden and eat something right off the vine as long as it looks clean (don't eat something with bird poop on it).

 It's too late this year to plant a garden (unless you live in the southern hemisphere), but it's the perfect time to start thinking about what you're going to do next year.  Go spend an afternoon in your yard and pay attention to how the sun falls across different parts of it.  Vegetables need at least 6 hours of full sunlight a day, and they do much better with even more.  But you also have to make it convenient for you to reach and water it, so don't put it as far away from your house as you can.  

If you have poor soil, think about having a raised garden, like mine.   It's more expensive initially, but you don't need to keep amending it every year the way you do with a traditional garden; just a little compost right before you plant.  Plus, its much easier to care for. 

And you don't have to have a traditional row garden, either.  They're a waste of time and space, in my opinion.  I live on 0.1 acre in town, so I try to cram in as many places to plant as I can.  When I'm done planting my raised gardens, I start looking for ways to add more planting space.  I've filled pieces of concrete molds with soil.

Cut-and-come-again leaf lettuce

I've filled 5 gallon buckets with a hole cut in the bottom.

Daikon radish buckets

I've filled window boxes with soil.  And yes, I've even filled cardboard boxes with soil.

Runner beans and pole beans

Vegetables aren't very demanding.  I mean, they are, of course.  They demand lots of sunshine, lots of water, and good rich soil to live in.  But otherwise?  They're happy to care for themselves.  They don't care if they're directly in the ground or in a container.  Of course, you want to give carrots and other large root vegetables like daikon radishes plenty of vertical  space, but even they're pretty forgiving.  I've seen pictures of carrots that bend at a perfect 90 degree angle because they hit the bottom of their container.

And if you're really trying to save money, consider heirloom seeds.  That's all I grow in my garden, with one or two exceptions.  Why?  Partially because I love the heritage and the stories behind those seeds.  Partially because I don't agree with how modern seeds are bred (using inbreeding, harsh chemicals, and sometimes radiation to create mutations).  But I think the biggest thing I like about heirloom seeds is that they're open-pollinated.  That means that they can breed and make seeds, and that you can then collect those seeds, and when you plant them, you'll get the exact same plant as the parents.  With modern plants, there's a good change you're getting a hybrid.  Hybrids either don't produce seeds, produce only sterile seeds, or if they do produce viable seeds, the plants that grow from them aren't the same thing as the parents and are usually far inferior.  

Plus, you get amazing variety with heirloom seeds.  I'm growing purple pole beans, radishes the size of your arm, tiny one pound watermelons, spinach that grows on a vine, white and green carrots, zucchini that grows up a trellis, tomatoes called "hillbilly", and dry beans that have pink pods.  Last year, I grew blue dwarf corn!

Now enough jabbering.  Here's all the rest of my garden pictures!  It's still early in the season for my area, so only the peas are really big right now.

Dwarf blueberry bush, with cute unripe berries

Peppers, kolhrabi, beets, turnips, garlic, dwarf tomato, vining zucchini

Close up of my Purple Top Milan turnip

Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and onions under a bug-proof net

Sugar snap peas, romaine lettuce, carrots, bush beans, and kale I'm letting go to seed

Close up of my Amish Snap sugar snap peas

Pole beans, English peas, onions, and zucchini under bug nets

Cucumbers, tomatoes, dry beans, and New Zealand spinach

My swing, and one of my raspberry brambles

My strawberry box

Some delicious strawberries

Onion and watermelons

My other raspberry bramble

Today's pea harvest

I hope you enjoyed my garden.  Now go out there and start thinking about how to start your own, or if you already have one, go take some pictures of it!