After many years of pining, and many months of delaying, I am now the proud tender of my very own growing space. My dear husband, whose benevolence more often than not gets taken for granted, spent several days designing and building me a raised planter box using nothing but his ingenuity, some hand tools, and a gift card to Lowe’s that he received as a Christmas gift. I am madly in love with my new box, and have been so busy spending time with it that I have gotten regrettably lax in my blogging!

My new planter is 4 ft long, 2 ft wide, and not quite 3 ft high – the box is 22 inches deep, and there is about a foot of space between the bottom and the ground. The bottom is slatted with 1 in spaces for drainage. Despite some reservations, we opted to line the box with plastic to keep moisture away from the wood, and hopefully prevent it from rotting.

I filled it with a 50/50 mixture of good top soil from City Farmers Nursery, and an inexpensive potting mix from California based Kellogg Garden Products.  For good measure I added in a few scoops of mushroom compost from Mountain Meadow Mushrooms in Escondido.

I was gifted a seedling tomato plant by my friend Bobby – an heirloom variety brought over from Italy by his grandfather, and passed down through the generations of his family. Down the row I planted 3 pepper plants from Lowe’s - a yellow bell, a santa fe grande chili, and a chili red hot pepper. A week or so after my initial planting, I added a booming cilantro and small basil that I picked up at the Mercato.

As an experiment I planted 9 sprouting cloves of garlic from my kitchen, and the green inside of a yellow onion.  As of this morning, five of the nine garlic cloves have poked their delicate green shoots through the surface.  I have developed the habit of running out to check on my plants three or four times a day, and cooing at them as if I were speaking to a baby.  “Aren’t you just the best, most beautiful little garlic…” “You’re doing such a good job growing.”

I have definitely been bitten with the gardening bug, and am looking forward to watching my little babies grow into full size producers.

For those of you already blessed with productive gardens, I would gladly accept and seeds, seedlings, or cuttings that you want to send my way.  The only caveat is that they must be able to withstand life in a container, as I am technically not allowed to plant directly in the ground.