I’ve been too busy this week to stop by the garden, but today I made the effort and was surprised by how much everything’s grown in a matter of days.

All of my peppers– Serrano, Jalapeno, Ghost, Thai Chili, Banana and Bell — are fruiting now, and none was last week. The husk cherry tomatoes I planted a few weeks ago are producing fruit like crazy, and both the squash and zucchini will have fruit in a week or less.

This is one of the best times of the growing season, when the plants first start producing and all of the hard work starts to pay off.

I can taste the salsa now.

One month later

Garden layout: First bed at the front of the image, left to right – Mesclun, buttercrunch lettuce, spinach, green beans, onions, two types of tomato (black cherry and big beef, I believe) zucchini.

Second bed, left to right – potted herbs (basil, sage, cilantro), four varieties of tomatoes (better boy, valencia, striped something something, and another I forget), jalapenos, habaneros, green and red chiles, yellow bell peppers, ghost peppers, and one more variety I can’t recall (I really, really like peppers), and broccoli.

It’s been a month or so since I planted the first wave of seeds and transplants in the micro-garden beds I’ve built at my Mom’s house here in Wilmington. A couple early observations: broccoli grows faster than anything I’ve ever seen, save maybe for zucchini and cucumbers; the spinach and buttercrunch lettuce are growing well, the mesclun, not as much; I lost two squash seedlings to a late frost while we were away on vacation, so I ripped them up and planted tomatoes in their place. Instead, I pulled out one of my zucchini seedlings and I’ll plant a new squash plant in its place. One of each plant should be more than enough, given how much fruit they produce and how fast they produce it.

I also planted a row of Mammoth Sunflowers yesterday along the fenceline bordering the far garden bed. I was so envious last Summer when all of my friends had beautiful, 8 to 10 feet tall sunflowers (or larger. See: Annen Stuckert) growing in their garden, and I had none. Hopefully this variety will get that big. Now that the sticky hot weather has arrived, the rest of the garden should pick up the pace; I’m dying for that first batch of peppers.

We may have had more than we could eat last summer, but still I couldn’t resist the lure of the vast expanse of useless sod, fencepost to fencepost, that lines the yards in Mom’s neighborhood.  So when I asked her this year if she would mind if we added another plot, I was happy to here her say: “Why not. The grass isn’t good for anything.”

So on Sunday I was able to hollow out a few hours in my evening (something increasingly difficult these days) to devote to garden preparations. I started the tedious task of flipping the sod in an 8′x3′ rectangle adjacent to last  year’s plot.

As you can see, the old plot was in pretty rough shape after a long winter of neglect. So when the sod was freshly flipped, I pulled up three grocery bags full of weeds, raked some of the hay that I used for a cover crop into the soil, and added some compost that was left over from last fall.

About a week later, after the flipped grass had had enough time to decompose, I bought the necessary lumber to build a raised-bed, as well as some peat moss, some composted manure, a bag of vermiculite and some standard top soil. I also bought a few broccoli starts, so I have something to look at in the garden while I wait for seeds to sprout and the tomato and pepper weather to come.

I’ll probably plant some direct seeds this week. I’ll start with onions, carrots, lettuce, spinach and cabbage. I need to sit down and map out the garden in earnest, so I make the most of the small space I  have (no more watermelon or pumpkin this year— they take up too much space and aren’t productive enough.)

This time of year, garden updates tend to dominate my posts so I apologize in advance while I turn into a middle aged woman. It’s that time of year.

We have our first sign of Spring sitting in the window  sill, looking out onto an alley and parking lot that don’t really seem suited for growing food. That’s one of the trade-offs of living downtown, I suppose; I gave up a yard for a prime location.

We’ll have a garden still, just not here. Between Mom’s house, Taylor’s prolific garden, our community garden, the ECC Demo garden and the college farm, I think I’ll be just fine.

Thanks to Phil Swindler of Swindler & Sons Florists, who graciously gave me the flat of lettuce and bok choi above, we’ll have some green to look at until the warmer weather decides to stay. We’ll have to figure out how to cat-proof our window boxes though, because, as you can see–

cats need their leafy greens, too. Those buggers.

Few places around the country have the luxury of year-round warm weather, suitable for growing food into the winter months. The rest of us must grin and bear it, and we’re left to rely on food trucked in from warmer climes at the expense of freshness and overall quality. But we may not be as powerless to the elements as we think.

A few different sources over the past couple of days have written about growing food indoors. The number of plants that we can realistically grow indoors pales in comparison to what we can put outside in our garden, where they have space to thrive, but that shouldn’t discourage us. Container gardening, either using artificial grow lights or a sunny window sill, can yield a surprising amount of food in a short amount of time, while we wait for the thermostat to climb.

Most people start their indoor gardening with herbs and spices, which require minimal sunlight and little space to grow. The National Gardening Association has a good article on indoor herb gardening here. Oregano, basil, chives and mint all grow well indoors, and can be grown year round in a container. Leafy vegetables like lettuce and arugula seem to fare better than their fruiting counterparts, as they require less maintenance and sunlight to thrive.

One indoor growing option has been sprouting up in a variety of places recently.

Jill Richardson of La Vida Locavore, the esteemed sustainable food blog, writes this week of learning to grow sprouts indoors. Sprouts may be the wunderkind of the homegrown food movement, because they’re incredibly rich in nutrients, relatively cheap to grow (relative to their sometimes hefty pricetag at the supermarket) and are ready to harvest in just seven days. Richardson’s post offers a nice DIY tutorial, complete with pictures and commentary on how to get started growing sprouts. Nutritionist Monica Reinagel, who writes for nutritiondata.com, recently wrote about the same dilemma of wanting to grow food in the winter, and highlighted sprouts as well.

If you’re willing to spend a little more money and spring for artificial lights, peppers and even tomatoes can be grown indoors during the winter, and can be transferred easily into your outside garden come spring. Peppers and tomatoes both like hot weather and won’t produce the quality of fruit indoors that you’re used to outdoors, but they will still grow inside and will give you a head-start when it’s time to transplant.

If nothing else, the next time you spring for baby greens or broccoli sprouts at the grocery store, ask yourself this question: “Could I do this myself?” It’s worth asking, and you just might surprise yourself with your answer.