Slow Motion Gardening

Like any self-respecting suburbanites, Cath and I planted a garden this summer. We enthusiastically and optimistically planted several varieties of tomato, pepper, cucumber, squash, beans and peas. We tilled in fertilizer and pot soil and diligently watered our little corner of the world. But we utterly failed to recognize the importance of photosynthesis in taking our garden from seedling stage to bushels of fresh veggies. You’ll recall from 3rd grade that the central figure in photosynthesis is the sun – and the sun in Seattle is, shall we say, a little less enthusiastic than other parts of the world.

All in all, we came out with a couple dozen cherry tomatoes, three small zucchinis, two Mexibell peppers (I think those were supposed to turn red, but they tasted fine green), a few meals worth of string beans, several handfuls of snow peas and….(drumroll please)……

A 3-inch cucumber

I picked it tonight. That’s right, it took until October 20th for this little guy to reach what I considered a pickable size (at least for pickles, right?). I haven’t eaten him yet (can’t bring myself to) but I’m sure he’s a winner, having already proven himself by enduring the rains and clouds of the Seattle summer and holding on tight to that vine while everything else rotted away.

Looking back on the season, it’s clear to me that gardening in Seattle is possible – it just happens in slow motion. Tomatoes come in late August, squash in mid-September, and apparently cucumbers come toward the end of October.

And because I’m a wannabe economist, I can’t end this post without pointing out the fact that we spent around $50 in plants, $6-ish in seeds, and roughly $20 in topsoil and fertilizer. We probably could have bought the same veggies at the farmer’s market for a total of $20, resulting in a net garden loss of $56. We do it for the love.