The best of 2012

Happy New Year, Baby Bee readers! Planning is underway for the 2013 Baby Bee Garden, but we can't look forward without taking a look back at 2012. We began the 2012 gardening season with the single goal of growing a better garden than ever. Well, we certainly out-did ourselves! Our plan was bold, and an overwhelming success! We planned for 21 vegetables, 6 florals, and 5 herbs in 21 containers. In the end we harvested and enjoyed 17 vegetables, 5 florals and 4 herbs, a success rate of about 84 percent! Here's a list of what we grew and ate:

• Spinach
• Snow Peas
• Broccoli
• Green garlic
• Lettuce
• Radishes
• Kale
• Carrots
• Swiss Chard
• Roma Tomatoes
• Zucchini
• Cow peas
• Eggplant
• Bell peppers
• Jalapeno peppers
• Cucumbers
• Strawberries
• Cilantro
• Parsley
• Basil

All grown in pots right out in the front yard! Now, it wasn't always easy. Our spinach was good, but grew slowly and bolted too soon. The broccoli and kale were primarily consumed by cabbage worms. The carrots, beets, and onions got crowded out by their container companions, resulting in tiny carrots and the death of the beets and onions. The cow peas grew beautifully, but the harvest from so few plants yielded barely enough for a small bowl-full of peas. Butternut squash and cantaloupe were abandoned early-on due to space issues. The dill never stood a chance against the squirrels. The cucumbers, zucchini and tomatoes out-grew their supports and spilled over into neighboring pots. And as vigorously as our tomato plants grew, we only got to eat about a dozen tomatoes. The birds, squirrels and caterpillars ate all the rest.

Of the plants that did well, some became the stars of our garden. The zucchini plants were lush and lovely and gave us plenty of succulent fruits. The swiss chard was big and beautiful, with tender leaves, and grew untouched by any pest. The snow peas grew fast, gave us multiple crops of crunchy sweet peas, and looked great on the obelisk trellis. The marigolds and nasturtiums lent the garden bursts of bright color all over, and it was a delight to eat the peppery nasturtium flowers in our salads. The strawberry plants grew a few hand-fulls of strawberries, just enough to munch on while visiting the garden. The eggplants were prolific, giving us pounds of the long purple fruits, some of which we were forced to give away since we couldn't eat them all. And nothing could be easier or faster to grow than cucumbers, which went from seed to fruit in just a few weeks. It's such a joy to prepare a meal with produce you grew at home. Just take a look at this, eggplant parmesan casserole!

All in all, it was a good season.We learned a lot about how much food you can grow with limited space. And can you believe we grew every plant from seed, with the exception of the strawberries? All this bounty from a handful of tiny seeds! That's the miracle of Mother Nature, right there. A big "Thank you!" to all the readers who followed us on this adventure in 2012! We hope you all will join us for what promises to be an exciting 2013 Baby Bee Garden... (click pics to enlarge)