38/365 How does my garden grow

I have a garden! Dad and I spent a beautiful afternoon getting it in, and I'm awfully excited about it. I made sure to get before and after photos, which you see here.

I had a small garden last year in a different location that didn't work out so well. From four tomato plants, I reaped about six tomatoes, and they were still attempting to ripen at Thanksgiving. And my cucumber plant's lone cucumber never did mature. The spot was too shady and the dirt in too poor condition. So this year: relocate!

Being surrounded by large maple trees, my yard is largely shaded. Great for the electricity bill, not so great for growing plants. So we chose to put the garden on the south side of my garage, in the one area of the backyard that gets some substantial sun.

The roof of the garage doesn't have gutters, so we also had to take that into consideration and put the plants outside of the drip line. We bought five bags of organic top soil, because we expected the soil to be in starved condition -- but, lo and behold, when we tilled it up, it looked fantastic! I have two bags of top soil left over that I'll have to share somewhere else in the yard.

I now have six lovely plants growing in my garden: two Better Boy tomatoes, one cherry tomato, one cucumber, one red pepper, and one jalapeno. Add three marigolds for bug control, and voila! Six plants doesn't sound like much, but with a good location and plenty of room to stretch out, I expect they'll produce plenty of fresh vegetables for me.

I also didn't want to get in over my head this first year. If all goes well this year, look out 2011!

Camera: Canon 40D
Before photo: 1/250s, f/5.6 at ISO 100 at about 11:00 a.m.
After photo: 1/125s, f/5.6 at ISO 200 at about 5:30 p.m.