Kristie McNealy, MD

While I’ve dabbled in gardening in the past, mostly in containers on my back patio, I’ve never considered myself gardener.  This winter however, with grocery prices rising, and our focus on eating whole, organic foods increasing, I really began to wish that I had put some effort into gardening and storing veggies last summer.

We began to plan a garden for this year, but decisions about where to put a garden and how to keep our 50 pound puppy out got a little overwhelming.  Then, by chance one friday night, I stumbled upon what for me was the prize giveaway of my admittedly very lame dreams: an Oasis garden from Backyard Botanicals.  This little gem was the answer to all of the hurdles we would be jumping over to put a garden in our backyard, and I actually won it!

The Oasis Garden comes in two large boxes weighing in at over 300 pounds.  When I read the instructions and found that it would take 2 “moderately skilled” people 6-8 hours to assemble, I felt doomed.  Fortunately though, the estimate was pretty accurate, and I managed to assemble it  (mostly myself) in about 12 hours.  Then we got soil delivered, and got ready to plant.

Oasis Garden

I had started some tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and lettuce indoors about 6 weeks prior to setting up my garden.  I planted those seedlings, along with a random organic tomato plant (Mr. Stripey) that my kids picked out at a local natural grocer.  To round things out, we planted more heirloom leaf lettuce seeds along with iceberg lettuce, carrot, radish and turnip seeds.

Vegetable Seedlings

Unfortunately, I got distracted by a watering system problem before I put the stakes in to mark where I had planted my seeds, so I’m totally in the dark right now.  Yesterday, the first of those seeds sprouted.  I think they are radishes, but I can’t be sure yet.  What do you think?

Mystery Seedlings

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