The City Girl's Guide to Country Gardening Lesson 9: Planting Tomatoes

City girls aren't the only ones to have trouble gardening. Watch Josh and Brent struggle to raise a vegetable garden on The Fabulous Beekman Boys.

If you had told me even six months ago that I would be on my 9th blog post about gardening, I would have laughed a whole lot. But let's just say it: This City Girl has become a green space convert. Granted, I'm only three months in to my first growing season, so maybe I shouldn't be sounding all nolstalgic. But I am because last week, I planted that tray of seedlings that got this whole business started.

Note that I am describing myself as a "green space convert," and not, I repeat, not using terms like "green thumb" or "master gardener." Ha! Remember how I flooded most of the yard by forgetting to turn off the garden hose? Master gardener, not so much.

Further proof of my rookie status is this picture of what my seedlings looked like after three months in their tray:

Reasons why this is not what you should be shooting for when you plant seedlings:

1) I never re-potted them. That's something smart gardeners do with seedlings, to help them get bigger and develop stronger root systems. Me, I kept sprinkling this tray with water every few days, but otherwise, I mostly forgot I had it once I started worrying about weeding and planting perennials and such outside.

2) I forget what everything is. Or rather, I know that the tray contained two types of tomatoes, some kale, and some stock flowers, but I lost the piece of paper where I mapped out what was what and I'll be darned if I can tell the difference between all those teeny tiny leaves. (That should have gotten bigger.)

The seedling tray made things easier on me by killing off a few seedlings for mysterious reasons that may or may not involve one of my cats eating them. And I had another lucky break when my step-father, who is a master seed starter and gardener, very kindly gave me two of his tomato plants (plus two peppers and some very clever potatoes that grow in a bag).

Here, let's compare what a properly cared for and re-potted tomato seedling looks like compared to mine:

Ahh. Now you get it.

But since I was in a sentimental space about my own little tray of seedlings and the symbolic sort of progress it implies (like how I've learned for next year not to bother starting seeds because the nurseries sell all kinds of darling tomato plants that you can just plant instead), I decided to plant the seedlings that most closely resembled the big tomato plant leaves along with the bona fide tomato plants, in the hopes that they'll feel inspired what with being outside and having some nice big tomato plants to look up to, and decide to get with it and start growing.

So here's the finished vegetable bed:

I'm particularly proud of how I made it look kind of fancy by edging it with some bricks that I found piled up under our front porch. Whether we'll get any tomatoes, peppers, potatoes or strawberries (that's what's in the terra cotta pot at the end) is a matter of some debate. But I'll keep you posted!