Even though my “Homestead” side of the family is squarely rooted in farming (read: my moms side from Kansas) it is my “Traveler” side (read: Italian Father) that fuels and inspires my love of gardening.

got my green thumb from my dad, as long as I can remember he was tinkering in the garden planting flowers and laying pathways. I remember snapping off sections of tender green bamboo and making minuscule flower bouquets as I meandered down the paths.

Towering blue agapanthus bobbing their spherical heads on long green necks chatting with the elegant white calla lilies wagging their bright yellow tongues. Bamboo and ivy edged ponds inhabited by succulents and bright red bachelor buttons fueled my day dreams. So it’s no surprise that as soon as I moved into my own home I planted a garden.

I love the concept of square foot gardening, build a planter box in a sunny part of your yard, perferrably near your kitchen, fill it full of fertile compost, hook it up to a form of watering system and you’re in business.

Raised beds capitalizing on the Square Foot gardening concept

Really, in gardening you only need four things: light, soil, water and time. Get this combination right and you can’t go wrong. For a summer vegetable garden you need loads of sunlight so pick your sunniest spot because veggies don’t like shade. My husband built us beautiful planter boxes on one Saturday afternoon right outside our door and surrounding the patio.

Location is important because you want to wander right out while you are cooking and snip the herbs you need for that meal. If the garden is too far away, you will never venture out there and the joy will be lost. I meander in my garden in the morning with my cup of coffee at first light still in my jammie’s, plucking off juicy boysenberries and plopping them in my mouth as I revel in the beauty of a cool summer morning.

Hooking up a good watering system is also key because you will doom yourself to fail if human error is left to remember the pour baby greens as they swelter in the first heat of summer. We usually pick up a drip irrigation system and hook up some tubing and bubblers to a timer. Now all that’s left is to plant and reap the harvest.

By planting in raised beds you eliminate the dreadful weeding problems inherit in a traditional gardens. I fill my raised beds with composted soil from the city. In Tracy, California you just drive to the “dump”, the place where you take your trash, you pull up and pay $6 and drive past the recycling, past the trash, past the piles of newly chipped tree trimmings and emerge at the back of the site where all of the tree trimmings and organic waste has been aging the past year in big steamy piles. A man operating a yellow land mover approaches your pick up truck and you wave your pink slip of paper at him that you want your load of dirt. He scoops it up with his big Tonka truck and dumps a huge load of the black earthy soil into your truck. Ahhhh, this is what trucks live for, to have large loads of soil dumped into their beds and drive off down the road spewing their dirty contents. I drive my precious cargo home and jumping into the bed of my truck, start to shovel wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load of dirt into my raised beds. I have repeated this scene so many times, my neighbors watching as this blonde desk jockey heave-hoes load after load of the black gold into her little orange wheel barrow, pushing it back and forth across the street from the truck to the garden beds. Yep, nobody ever said this was easy, gardening is a grown woman playing in the dirt with a big smile across her face, a messy bun on top of her head, a dirty smudge across her cheek and dreaming of the tomatoes and cucumbers that will thrive in her garden.

One sure fire way of having a bumper crop of plump red tomatoes and overflowing summer squash is to finish your rich compost soil with a couple of bags of chicken poo. Chicken poo makes a garden sing, everybody is happy when planted in chicken poo! You will grow the sweetest beets, peas, beans and eggplant that anyone has ever had! One year I wanted to plant a square foot garden for my mom but she looked at her dried, used up soil in her raised beds and woefully said “tomatoes just don’t like it here, I’ve tried and it won’t set on tomatoes.” So I dumped a bag of chicken poo on her tired soil and that summer we had a bumper crop of tomatoes! After that she goes around telling everyone to “use chicken poo!!!” Sure enough, the friends that listen to her harvested a bumper crop of boysenberries and tomatoes. You can buy bags of chicken manure at your local hardware store. It’s not as gross as you think, it actually looks like a bag of potting soil.

Once the hard work of building the beds, filling them with dirt and equipping them with watering systems is over, it’s time for the fun stuff: planting your garden. The best time for a summer garden here in the Central Valley of California is early May, I’m always chomping at the bit to plant my garden on the first warm day of March, but it’s better if you can wait a little. I got mine in in late April/early May, but if you still haven’t done it, don’t worry, stick them in the ground, they will grow just the same. We have a long growing season here, so even if you are gnashing your teeth as your neighbors with good foresight already are harvesting lettuce and radishes, it’s not too late!

This year I planted little tomato plants in “six-packs” from the nurshery, I chose “early girl” because I can never wait to harvest perfectly ripe and red tomatoes from the garden. However, try as you may to get them started early, they will always start busting loose around July fourth. I also chose a nice ruby red heirloom tomato that promises big ruby colored tomatoes and Cherry tomatoes because they are always the earliest to ripen. I planted the large purple eggplant and the slender Japanese Eggplant because they also seem to be ready faster. I have beautiful lemon cucumbers already climbing up their trellises and hot peppers promising to tantalize the taste buds. I have high hopes for the green beans and okra that I planted by seed directly in the soil, they have already popped out of the black soil uncurling their leaves as they reach heavenward just like the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. I can already taste the pickeled okra and greenbeans lining the shelves of the pantry in my mind. Yes, to plant a garden is to dream of tomorrow.

The radishes and lettuces did not disappoint, after just thirty days from planting I am already harvesting the tender outer leaves of the red leaf lettuce and peppery Arugula. I have already hauled in over ten large containers worth of the tender leaves, consuming salads everyday and giving away bag fulls to neighbors and friends. We love to make a simple vinegarette of lemon juice and olive oil and toss it up with the baby greens along with a generous grating of Asiago cheese and pine nuts, simple perfection! I gather in the red radishes, removing their green tops and dip them in a little sea salt for digestion. Ahhhh, the joys of a garden.

One of the most rewarding things you can plant right outside your kitchen door is an herb garden. I planted flat leaf parsley, chives, mint, rosemary, sage, thyme and basil. These are largely perennials, meaning you will only need to plant them once, they live year after year. Basil and parsley are annuals here in California, meaning you will need to replant them every year. But what a reward! I fry up fresh sage leaves in a little butter before starting my Stroganoff and garnish the dish with it at the end. The sage infuses the butter with flavor that will enhance the dish you are making and the crispy sage on top will be your favorite part of the dish. I snip fresh parsley on my Paella and Lemon Caper Swai and it adds such a fresh flavor. Not to mention all of the Tabbouleh salad you could make this summer with your parsley and tomatoes. I sprinkle a little fresh thyme on almost everything: stew, baked potato, pasta… I love how it makes everything taste like it’s from the South of France. I’m instantly transported to a little winery at the end of a long dusty road in France, sipping a Beaujolais while chatting with a Frenchman.

I think we all know what do do with fresh basil, there is nothing better than fresh tomatoes drizzled with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar with a handful of fresh basil sprinkled on top. Serve it with fresh toasted and buttered french bread and you have Bruscetta, simple and delicious in its summertime perfection.

I hope you get some veggies and herbs into the ground and let the miracle of time take over, resulting in a joyful summertime harvest.

For More “Homestead” Articles see our Archive stories:

The Beginning of a Blog (Published May 18, 2017)

The Cherry Tree (Published May 20, 2017)

How to Roast Your Own Coffee Beans (Published May 22, 2017)

Successful Square Foot Gardening (Published May 23, 2017)

Yosemite (Published June 7, 2017)

My Tiny House (Published June 15, 2017)

Making Noyaux (French Bitter Almond Extract from Stone fruit pits) Published August 7, 2017)

Sweet & Spicy Pickles (Published July 21, 2017

Classic Canned Peaches (Published August 6, 2018)