Planning This Summer’s Garden

For the past few years, I have really started to get into gardening. Whether it’s digging up the earth or putting planters on the porch, I love to get my hands dirty and with a little work, make something grow. Summer is such a short season here in Ontario and I try to enjoy as much of it as possible. Even living in an apartment, I’ve always found a way to grow something.

Last year, Garrett and I had so much fun growing our community garden, and in the end it was quite lush, but we didn’t get as many vegetables out of it as we had hoped. If we do it again this year, I think we’ll use less varieties of vegetables and space them even farther apart.

Our greatest success were these sugar snap peas, which wound their way around the twine and lattice fence. With the exception of those which were gobbled up by the bunnies, we ended up getting plenty to snack on during our visits to the garden.

This year, I am planning to find a way to grow cherry tomatoes and sugar snap peas in containers on our porch. This way we can enjoy them in salads as soon as they are ready. Having the plants at our home, instead of a bike ride away, should also make it easier to take care of them properly too. Hopefully this will help us have a big yield!

Another successful vegetable we had were these hot peppers, which I thought were just mild little things, but turned out to be scotch bonnets…40 times stronger than a jalapeno pepper! I soon learned how potent they were when I tried to cut some of them for a ratatouille, burning my skin from the heat of the peppers and ending up in the emergency room. I still have some mild nerve damage in my fingers from it, which I get whenever I chop up even the most mild of jalapenos. I now keep a package of disposable rubber gloves in the kitchen for just these occasions. Obviously I won’t be growing those again!

The most important of which, is the herb garden. I can’t go through the summer without fresh herbs on hand. Nothing beats adding fresh herbs to a dish. This year I’m attempting to grow my herbs from seed, but in the past I’ve picked up already grown herbs.

I even had an herb garden on my front porch steps back in the summer of 2011 when I was still living in Toronto. A little bit of green in a concrete jungle.

I also had a big potted strawberry plant from my favourite garden centre. I never knew that you could grow strawberries in a pot! It was such a nice treat to have fresh berries for breakfast every morning.

Have you ever had success growing vegetables, herbs or even strawberries in containers? Any suggestions on what else we can grow on our porch this summer?