This Side of the Pond

As the old joke goes, the time has come for everyone in Wyoming to start locking the doors of their vehicles, because zucchini season is here. This is certainly close to the truth for my next-door-neighbors, who have been hauling armfuls of tomatoes indoors for weeks.

Those neighbors are, for the sake of clarity, my parents-in-law, whose newly created vegetable patch has transformed into a veritable jungle. Hiding among plants that are now as tall as trees, Mom-in-Law has managed to grow the largest cauliflower I’ve ever seen, a towering pile of squash and enough tomatoes to feed the five thousand.

This hasn’t been the case for our own garden. Let’s just say that it’s unlikely we’ll be sneaking produce onto any back seats in the foreseeable future.

It’s not for lack of trying. In fact, we’ve put a great deal of effort into what can only be described as a failed experiment.

It’s been a good while since I tried my hand at gardening, and never before I moved here did I do so without the direct supervision of my father and/or grandfather. Not to mention that the conditions here are much different to the soil I was working with.

Back in the UK, it drizzles for most of the summer and our winters are mild. Not only do we have the advantages of more nutrient-heavy soil and a longer growing season, there’s a much different selection of seeds available to plant.

Runner beans, carrots, peas and potatoes were the staple in my grandfather’s garden, which at one point covered the entire back yard before my grandmother pointed out she’d quite like at least enough lawn to park a chair on. He also developed an impressive strawberry patch, although not many of its fruits ever made it past us to the kitchen.

Fast forward to Wyoming, and last fall we decided to fence off a small area of yard for purposes of dog safekeeping. It then occurred to us that keeping the puppies in meant keeping the deer out, which meant we finally had a secure location for growing edible items.

This summer seemed like a great time to find out exactly how green our thumbs are, so we devised a grand experiment. To figure out the best locations for sunlight and raindrops, we opted to use containers for the time being.

We purchased tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, lettuce and some herbs, found some likely-looking soil and dutifully cultivated our seeds. Proud of the domestic paradise it appeared we had created, we sat back and waited for the harvest to begin.

At first, everything went swimmingly. This was even true for the lettuce, despite the container being low enough for one of the dogs to keep mistaking it for a springboard that might just get her close enough to catch that pesky squirrel.

(She was incorrect, each of the fifteen times she made the attempt.)

We then came to the realization that the three majestic trees in the middle of the yard provide so much shade that there is, in fact, not a good place in the yard for good growth. Despite playing musical chairs with the containers for weeks, it was too late for the pepper plants.

By the time we found a corner that enjoys sun throughout the day, our plants were at least a month behind themselves. And because life likes to sprinkle in a little extra frustration when it can, our cilantro promptly sun-scorched and withered away.

Our little yard is located in what was once a drainage channel, which makes it the only place in Wyoming to still resemble the emerald fields of Ireland. Even now, we have grass that would make the tennis courts of Wimbledon jealous.

You’d have thought this would have a positive effect, but we weren’t trying to grow vegetables in well-moistened beds. Because this was on the docket for next year, we scattered wildflower seeds in the one bed that already exists just to see what results we might get.

We haven’t spotted a single petal.

This is because the flower bed is also home to those pesky trees. Even when we removed most of the branches from one of them to correct the damage from last September’s snowstorm, the shade very much remained.

As did the damp grass, which began to attract a myriad of insects. We’re not sure which visiting species took a fancy to our broccoli plants. We’re also not sure what broccoli has that lettuce plants don’t, but they munched their way through every bit of broccoli and left everything else alone.

Not that it made much difference. I’m sorry to report that, despite all our attentions, the harvest from our garden this year has consisted of the following:

Sufficient lettuce to top precisely two hamburgers.

One tomato (currently displayed on a shelf to prove we did manage to grow something.)

12 cherry tomatoes (there might have been more but the husband got to them before I did.)

A sprinkling of basil (just enough to season our abundance of tomatoes.)

One red pepper, still on the plant. Mostly green at this time, expected to ripen just in time for next year’s harvest.

We did a lot of work to barely put together the makings of a single salad, but we also learned some important lessons. The most relevant of which, it turns out, is that it doesn’t really matter if the yard is lacking in sunshine, because the lady next door will keep us stocked on side dishes all fall long.