Originally uploaded by ryanmshea.

I really don’t have enough experience with gardening to know how unusual this is, but my tiny little garden is reaching gargantuan proportions. The tomato plant (yes its a single plant) in the back is taller than my fence and taller than me. The silver thing in the picture is a yard stick to give you an idea. This morning I looked out and saw a cardinal perched in one of my pepper plants – is that normal?

Unfortunately there are only a couple tomatoes on the vine right now. The peppers however are coming in quite strong, with cayanne and habenero representing hard core. I’ll have quite a bit of pickling to do soon.

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Originally uploaded by ryanmshea.

I enjoy working in my garden, talking about my garden, and looking at my garden. Sometimes people look at this little 12′ by 3′ plot and say “oh, its just a little tiny garden; I was expecting more”. Nope, there is no more.

Its funny to me that although this is the fourth year I’ve planted – I still know next-to-nothing about gardening. Usually I will research hobbies more and take them a bit more seriously, but in this case I have been content to fail and learn my own lessons.

With each passing year I attempted to dig deeper and deeper into the rock-hard Virginia red clay – using only the flat-ended shovel I had in my shed. This year I got a garden claw for hand tilling, and I broke down and purchased a spade. At this point I would consider the soil excellent quality and denseness . It has a rich dark color, loose consistency, and is speckled with tiny tiny bits of red clay that help maintain moistness.

Based on how easy it is for the weeds (mint) to grow, I’d say that the root structure of my peppers is doing well also. I’ve installed some ghetto irrigation soda-bottles in the soil to act as a water funnel to promote deep root growth. This year I finally reached what I would consider a passable depth. I raised up the garden with some 6″ pressure treated lumber and some wooden stakes.

I’ve got some jalepeno, habanero, hot bananna peppers, cherry hot peppers, and cayenne peppers. A lemon-boy tomato plant is making a cameo in the center of my garden and will hopefully produce more than the pitiful yield (two) of my tomato plants last year, and they’ll be a fun yellow color.