I literally swore when I was out in my garden yesterday. Loudly.

Every two or three days I poke around my zucchini plants to make sure the leaves are handling things ok. You see, a couple of weeks ago my zucchini plants hit some sort of insane growth spurt and what seemed liked overnight, began to grow outwards and over top of my cucumbers, leeks, lettuce and carrots. Not good. I researched some vertical gardening techniques, bought myself some bamboo stalks, and voila. Problem solved.

But what made me curse out loud was this huge, ginormous green vegetable underneath all those tied up zucchini leaves. My first zucchini! The last time I saw zucchini’s under there, they were maybe 6″ long. This thing is over a foot! I had better start finding some recipes that call for zucchini. Anyone want one? Hey, maybe I’ll do a ‘Free Zucchini Giveaway’.

There also seem to be a lot of little critters in my garden. Some I know are good, like the woodbugs and the worms and the bees, but then there’s some others that I’m not so sure about. As I’ve chosen to purchase organic soil and not use any pesticides or chemicals in my garden to grow vegetables that are as organic as possible, apparently all I can do is pluck these critters out.

What’s on the docket for the garden for the rest of July? This!

I feel like a student on the first day of class, except not in the least bit intimidated and totally committed. I’m a sponge for anything gardening 101 . You got info? Tell me about it, I want to know! Here are some more snippets of what I’ve soaked up from other knowledgeable people so far on this glorious topic:

• Keeping records is a must if you want to have hard evidence of what worked and what didn’t. Got my notebook, check.

•Every garden is a unique eco-system, so learn what has worked for others in their gardens, but be prepared for your own individual results.

• Our raised bed depth must be at least 12″; 16″-18″ for high root biomass vegetables like tomatoes. Love tomatoes, 18″ it is.

•Blackberries are an “invasive species” and will be the bain of my gardening existence. Lovely. Plan of attack: rip out the roots by hand, lay down black plastic or heavy netting, build raised beds, cross fingers. Oh, and be prepared to rip a few stubborn roots who make it through the plastic/netting.

•Clover is a favorite for planting tightly around plants once they’ve sprouted for support, to keep moisture in the soil, and build nutrients throughout the garden. And this will equate to less watering and weeding which I like the sound of. Apparently seaweed and leaves are fabulous for this job too.

•Crop rotation gardening is one great way to not only build great soil and conserve soil nutrients but also get variety out of a garden and year round harvesting. The key here though is to alternate high root biomass planting (ie broccoli, cabbage, carrots, peas and tomatoes) with those of low-root biomass (clover, beans, onions, corn, cucmber and pumpkin).

•Vertical gardening rocks my world; trellis’s, re-bar, mesh netting for vegetables to grow upwards. Doing it, doing it, doing it.

This weekend is rip out the blackberry bush roots - in full force! Wish us luck!!