Things are really popping around here. My garden is producing well and I even have a enough to set up a small table at the local farmer's market. I have been selling there each Wednesday evening for a month now. Some of the things I have sold are 3 different kinds of beautiful lettuce heads, fennel, chard, kale, garlic scapes, Russian sage, leaf lettuce, hmmmmm......I am sure there's more, but that's all that comes to my mind at the moment.
This garden has been interesting. I had read a little bit about lasagne gardening before I planted, so I used a "sloppy" method of lasagne gardening on part of it to see what would happen and what the difference is. I am amazed. I chose the area of the former garden where Matt and Jacy had their green house to be the location of my garden. I was dreading the clean up part of the tomato vines, etc. do I just put old leaves, which had been in black plastic bags all winter, straw, and compost right over the top. I just went to work planting right in that stuff. The next area is where I planted my corn. I got some recycled black plastic from a dairy and put it down for my corn. I had a long, flat stick and I measured off every 12" and then used it as a guide to cut holes in the plastic to plant my corn. I am really pleased with that technique. My corn is growing well and if I can keep the raccoons out of it, I just may have some for the freezer.
The next area of the garden I had tilled, which I hope to never do again. You can't imagine how many more weeds are in that area. I planted carrots, beets and beans in that part and it has been the most labor intensive so far as far as weeding goes. I have been so enamored with the lasagne gardening technique that I finally ordered the book. It's basically the same premise, but you put down cardboard or heavy layers of newspaper before you put down the layers of compost, etc.
One fun thing about my garden is the many surprises. I saw a yellow blossom over in the zucchini, so I went to check it out. I thing squash blossoms are about the most beautiful blossom! When I looked down, not only was there a blossom, but a zucchini! It doesn't take much to excite me!
The other surprises are the ones that have come up from seed from the previous gardeners. I found a tomato plant growing in the beans, tomatillos growing near the pumpkins, swiss chard scattered about, a cute little Johnny jump up violet, dill, broccoli that's getting florets, and there's lettuce everywhere that came back from last year! Discovering these little treasures has been a lot of fun.
One thing about it, it keeps me busy! |
